Category: AIDS

Kicking the can down the road

After writing and publishing this in a sleep-deprived state, I thought I ought to take it down and rework it. I slept from 8PM to 1:30AM, and then from 2AM to 4AM last night, which is 7-1/2 hours, so I ought to be rested. But I’m not. This aging thing, I don’t understand much of it. Some of it I like, as with never being expected to stay late at a gathering or participate in a family volleyball game. I’m never asked to pick up someone from the airport, 75 minutes away on the other side of Denver. It’s not all bad.

Anyway, here’s the piece, hopefully much shortened.

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Wikipedia: A Confidence Game

The con man

The term “con man” may bring to mind images of shady, underworld characters, but reality is quite different. A good con artist needs to appear trustworthy and likable in order to win the trust of his victim. Con artists are charismatic, intelligent, have good memories, and know how to manipulate people’s hopes and fears. They attempt to blend in, to look and sound familiar, and often work diligently at appearing to be smooth, professional, and successful. A con man may wear an expensive suit and appear to work in a high class office.[2] Or, conversely, a con artist may put him or herself in a weaker position to play on a victim’s sympathies: They may take on the role of illegal immigrant, a likable man down on his luck, or a woman with a small child who needs to use the bathroom. From city official to roofer, the con artist can appear to be just about anyone.

Two names came to mind as I read the above definition: Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Oddly, they both belong to a list of US presidents who changed their names prior to taking office. Isn’t that odd? Top of the list is Gerald Ford (Lesley King), followed by Clinton (William Jefferson Blythe III) and Barack Obama (Barry Soetoro).

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Out of the closet, into our faces

As a youth growing up in Billings, Montana, I knew nothing about counterculture of gays living among us. The idea of two men kissing (and more) was abhorrent to me (still is), though two women … well, another story. In retrospect I think a good friend from my youth was a repressed homosexual. In his family, such behavior would have led to shunning, maybe even violence from the Dad. I came to think that repressed homosexuals can be dangerous, as the pent-up rage often translates to violence, domestic and otherwise.

I knew a woman (through my then-wife’s workplace) who married a man who after the vows went completely asexual on her, leading to divorce for cause, in that he could not/would not perform. I knew of a man, son of a prominent businessman, who might be thought of as a flamer, openly gay and probably trying to embarrass his dad with (perceived) abhorrent behavior. In the 1960s and 70s, this was all par for the course, the way it was. It was tough to be LGBT.

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The problem of Kary Mullis

Two days ago we received the following comment from Beata:

You are the first person I came across who suggested that Mullis probably met with an untimely demise. I thought about it soon after the PCR tests became the gold standard of covid diagnosis. My intuition told me that they got rid of him because he would talk and their entire scam would have been uncovered too soon to take hold.

It is probably not wise to make conjectures based on no evidence, or flimsy evidence, and I certainly have none to back up my suspicion that Mullis was murdered. I have only this: In the AIDS debate he was a turd in the punch bowl. He comes off as an honest, if somewhat odd man, kind of a Doc Brown of chemistry. He could easily be ridiculed and marginalized if he had not invented PCR and won a Nobel Prize for it (along with Michael Smith). He had gravitas.

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