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Gregg Levine@greggjlevine.bsky.social |
210 followers 401 following 1598 posts
Reporter/Editor/Analyst | Flâneur/gadabout/gimlet eye | bys @NewYorker @TheNation @Guardian @NewRepublic @AJAM | 2020 Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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And what sucks is that we (at least those of us who think about personal and public health) are left to make these risk-benefit analyses every time we need health care. What would be worse, letting x problem linger or grow, or risking a new respiratory infection?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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The more I think about it, the part where Biden just says the polls are wrong is the most disconcerting. No, it wasn’t as garbled as Biden listing accomplishments, but it was an infinitely predictable question, and Biden’s entire team failed at prepping a better answer than “nah-ah.”
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I don’t think this changed the narrative… any narrative.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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George Stephanopolous wasted a lot of the interview on the hypothetical “what if so-and-so told you to get out.” Maybe it would have been better to get him to pledge to do certain campaign things… or (heaven forbid) policy things. And, needless to say, Biden wasted time arguing with poll numbers.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Well, that wasn’t debate-level bad… but that’s maybe just a wee bit too low a bar, no?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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ABC has a streaming headline news channel, I think I saw that they were going to run this at 8:30 EDT. Also, MSNBC is running “analysis” at 8:30. I don’t know if they have access to clips.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Why is Joe Biden holding a pen in this ABC interview?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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If you’re of a certain age or have had to go through certain debilitating illnesses, you know what “cognitive test” means. It’s that thing that Trump claims he aced. You might be asked to draw a clock face & identify animals. You are given a short list of words and asked to repeat it.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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“I’ve had a cognitive test every single day” isn’t really the closer you think it is.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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You really want to brag on your Middle East peace plan right now? You really want to go there?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Note for all the science nerds out there: a cold IS a virus.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Hate to piss in the punch bowl, but, if you remove Scotland, can you really call this a landslide FOR Labour, or just a landslide AGAINST the Tories?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I guess Freaky Friday came a day early.
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article...
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I’ll admit I’m just watching BBC from the states, but I think I noticed the same thing.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I’ll add that even tho Sir Keir will be PM by a Labour landslide, Starmer got substantially fewer votes in his constituency than he did last election. Those votes went to an indy candidate who challenged KS’s support for Israel’s war. And this cost Labour seats elsewhere, too.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Cable news turns almost every fox into a hedgehog.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Are there any lessons for US election watchers in tonight’s UK results? 🤔I’ll note this: The BBC has just revised down the size of Labour’s victory. In several of those constituencies, it appears Labour lost votes to candidates expressly running against UK support for Israel’s destruction of Gaza.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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So, the next Prime Minister, a man whose party is winning by a landslide, actually nets fewer votes for his own seat than in the prior election, losing thousands of votes to a candidate who made opposition to Israel’s war on Gaza the focus of his campaign.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Neil Kinnock smiling and punching the air when he hears George Galloway has lost his seat is a vibe.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Celebrating American Independence Day in the most natural way imaginable: by watching election returns from the UK on the BBC.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I’m not seeing anything on Bsky on the passing of Martin Stolar. From the all-important Handschu decision to this year’s Gaza demonstrations, Marty spent more than half a century defending the rights of protestors against the abuses of police power. Below, a 2018 profile by an old friend. RIP
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Since his earliest days in the Senate, Biden has worked hard to position himself in some sort of centrist sweet spot. When the party moved left, Biden moved left; when it moved right, Biden moved right. It’s infuriatingly reactive (not proactive), but it shows a man essentially begging for pressure.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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But I’ll note this about these stories: it’s very clear the Biden camp is now ramping up efforts to quiet calls for Biden to step aside because the criticism has persisted. The Biden WH might be slow, but given a hard enough push, they move. This should be the lesson for policy as much as politics.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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“Damage control” is really not the term you want to hear in a battle for the future of the democracy, but more surprising are the reports that it took days for Team Biden to kick into that mode. abcnews.go.com/Politics/whi...
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Clyburn’s seeming ease with making public statements about what he wants from Biden, plus an equal ease with “pre-endorsing” Harris if Biden can’t meet Clyburn’s expectations, makes me doubt the Biden campaign’s future more than all the pundits & anon sources combined.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Clyburn repeated today that he will talk to Biden & that the SC Dem wants to see Biden in public much more. I’m shocked Team Biden hasn’t seen this on their own, but it was Clyburn who had to repeatedly goose Joe in 2020 to force action to save that campaign.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Power concedes nothing without a demand, and that includes the power that might sometimes, if you’re really lucky, invite you to the afterparty.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Yet somehow…
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Now that one is truly deserving of your wholehearted ire.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I get it—I continue to fight against “impacted” when it’s not about teeth & people pronouncing forte “for-tay” when they’re not talking about music—but it does feel like sterilizing is common parlance now.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Your honor, with all due respect, she takes just like a woman—yes, she does—she makes love just like a woman… yes, she does… and she aches just like a woman, but she breaks just like a little girl.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Thank you! I knew I wasn’t completely off base.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Inhaled spray.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Oh yeah. I’m with you there. I call some of them “Team Virus.”
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Yes, and I speak to virologists that say that we let up too early & let it go too long, & now that it can go back & forth between domesticated animals & humans it’s here to stay, but I’d still rather have this arrow in my quiver & then fight for better leaders who’ll re-prioritize public health.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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The Biden admin stopped addressing the emergency, and the WHO changed the way they talk about it, but even they say the pandemic isn’t over, and most of the experts I converse with see something like this mucosal vax as important for public health if we’re not going to require more mitigation.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I appreciate that. Am I wrong, though, that a lot of folks who write about this say “sterilizing?”
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Here’s a very generic FDA primer on how the phases of drug trials work. Normally, you could be looking at 2-8 years. But we got the first Covid jabs through the system in a year. Anyone have a sense of what the govt is thinking for nasal vaccines? www.fda.gov/patients/dru...
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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A sterilizing nasal mucosal vaccine. This is what all who still care about ending this pandemic have been hoping & waiting for. This is what govt should’ve been “warp speeding” the last 3+ years.
This is a Phase 1 human trial. Long way to go. Does anyone know how long?
www.nih.gov/news-events/...
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Just learning this. This was a hand-to-mouth “oomph.” RIP
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I really like this quote I just heard from Jamie Raskin’s dad: “When everything looks hopeless, you’re the hope.”
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I think there are two questions—can Biden win in 2024 & can he govern in 2025–and I think a lot of people are purposefully blurring the difference. I’ve had my doubts about both for a long time; the latter is existentially more important, but if the former is impossible, the latter doesn’t matter.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Yeah, and I’m not saying we don’t have a problem (like I said, I thought we had one a long time ago), but where does this leave us—now, so close to the convention & election—in party politics & campaign finance law terms? I just feel like someone is trying to pressure me to purchase the undercoat.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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I’d tend to agree, but that’s a different issue—one more in line with my “why now” question about the anonymous NYT/FT quotes. Knowing this problem was brewing and choosing not to foster a discussion comfortably in advance seems like some elites are now trying to shock-doctrine us.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Did those parties really not see any of this before last Thursday? I’ve long been saying that Biden has been observably declining since his first Covid infection. I’m not saying people should have heard me shouting into the void, but if I could see it with no close access, couldn’t those closer in?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Aging is def dynamic & not always linear, & I also don’t think Biden knew what Biden would be like 4 years out. Who among us knows these things about ourselves? But what we keep ignoring here is a Biden problem & a broader one. Covid infections accelerate cognitive decline & Parkinsonism.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Yes, I remember those & I’m not discounting them. Here, I’m thinking more about a “NYT/WH staff says” kind of reported story. Also, there’s a bit of difference between the “he’s just too old” commentary and a “he’s now observably diminished” story.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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While I don’t really doubt the observation, where was this story two weeks ago? Two months ago? Two years ago? You know, when there were better options and time for a nuanced debate.
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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Did they ask about Parkinson’s or Lewy Body?
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Gregg Levine
@greggjlevine.bsky.social
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It worked for Woodrow Wilson! 🤷♂️
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