Best smackdown of the week


What makes it even sweeter is the target of the slap, Ted Cruz. What an ignorant wanker!

The tragedy of racism and bigotry and Cruz’s nationalism is that it routinely neglects the other human beings outside their own little in-group.

Comments

  1. birgerjohansson says

    Of the four vaccines at the front (I do not count the Russian or the Chinese ones, as the testing for the latter was limited because of time constraints and the former is was driven by politics) I think America has been involved with one. Or is it two? There are networks of cooperation between several actors that makes it hard for me to keep up with the details.
    You also have the option to inject bleach which is a uniquely American approach.

  2. Larry says

    So idiot Cruz wants to take credit, once more, for something he had absolutely nothing to do with and, in fact, is (hopefully) a preventative measure for something he doesn’t even believe is real.

  3. slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) says

    Is he playing with his Canadian birth to imply Canada invented it as the only reason they are distributing it before us?
    Is he going withtRump’s claim that we invented it and Pfizer only manufacturing it for us?
    Crude (Cruz) is completely scrambled comprehensible.
    Still don’t understand how he went over to tRump after all the insults the kandydate tRump threw at them.

    “just wondering” is the neo form of J.A.Q

  4. consciousness razor says

    Well, that’s a little disappointing…. Deciphering this one wasn’t too much trouble, but it just says he wants more slaves for the afterlife. He really needs to come up with some new material.

  5. Bernard Bumner says

    The stupidity of this is that American doctors, scientists and study participants have played an important role in developing the vaccine. American vaccine development and regulatory expertise has featured throughout.

    Had Cruz wanted to acknowledge that significant American contribution as part of global efforts, rather than trying to claim the entire credit, then no-one would be complaining.

  6. Stuart Smith says

    No mention of the fact that the delivery method for the Pfizer vaccine was pioneered by a Vancouver company?

  7. raven says

    I think America has been involved with one. Or is it two?

    More like three of the leading ones.
    The Moderna one, mRNA.
    Novavax Subunit vaccine, S protein.
    Johnson and Johnson Adenovirus vector, manufactured in Leiden, The Netherlands

    Sanofi suffers major setback in development of a Covid-19 vaccine
    By HELEN BRANSWELL @HelenBranswellDECEMBER 11, 2020 Statnews

    One of the leading vaccines has run into trouble, the Sanofi one, French. This is not good news. Sanofi has a lot of depth and could manufacture at scale.

    As many have noted, the world needs more than one vaccine and it needs them as soon as possible.

  8. larrylyons says

    What a hypocrite. In two ways. First, Ted Cruz was born in Calgary, Alberta in Canada. So technically even though his parents are American, he is in essence an immigrant,

    And second, for the first four years of his life and for the 9 months before he took advantage of Canada’s (at the time Alberta’s) socialized medicine.

  9. davidc1 says

    To get all the antivaxxers to have the vaccine ,leak the news to a well respected news channel such as fox ,hahahahahahahahahahaha ,that them demonocrats are not going to let anyone who voted for the snatch snatcher ,or is a gun owner ,or a god botherer get the Covid vaccine ,result 100% take up .
    I really should be running the world .

  10. Bernard Bumner says

    @#13, raven,

    The world does need more than one candidate and in sufficient volumes, but is also worth noting that companies also often buy in manufacturing capacity from contract organisations. Some of that capacity may become available if some candidates drop out of contention. So I’m less worried about manufacturing at scale, because I think that reserved capacity will be rationalised and redeployed as the best candidate vaccines emerge.

    And Sanofi will not be leaving gaps in their manufacturing schedules: they will turn over any capacity to other equally worthy vaccine/therapeutic molecules. We should all remember that whilst pharmaceuticals manufacturing is focused on COVID products, that means it isn’t being used for other life-saving/changing drugs.

  11. zetopan says

    “Did he apologize for being an idiot?”
    That would take away all of crazy Cruz’s time that he steadily and continually uses to demonstrate that he is a raving idiot. Cruz is WAY too stupid to even recognize irony, hence his continual “both feet in mouth” diseased rantings.

  12. a_ray_in_dilbert_space says

    Marcus Ranum: “Ted Cruz is such a great punching-bag.”
    You know, I’ve never tried, but I’d like to. Is there a waiting list I can sing up for?

  13. unclefrogy says

    truth does not mater what is most important is faith it is what you believe that rules the day ‘We make our own reality”
    the basis of current right wing thinking.
    uncle frogy

  14. wzrd1 says

    One can always count on Cruz to set himself up. As was mentioned, double foot in mouth disease.
    While both feet are again firmly inside of his mouth, we should set up a ticket booth for folks to kick him in the ass. That could bring in more than enough money to cover ten times the first stimulus checks.

  15. says

    Taiwan is buying vaccines from multiple sources, including Pfizer, 15 million according to one report. We’re probably low on the ladder for receiving them.

    At the same time, Taiwan’s Adimmune, United Biomedical, and Medigen are in stage two testing of their own, and a fourth company in stage one. Better too many choices than none at all, I guess. And it’s another thing to export this year.

    robro (#5) –

    Did Ted have a reply to that?

    It was a knee jerk reaction from a jerk living on his knees. It’s expected.

  16. kome says

    Once again, Ted is lying. He wasn’t asking out of curiosity at all, much less just so. He was asking because he’s a bullshit artist who engages in shallow rhetorical nonsense because he knows his supporters are shallow intellects who don’t care about substance or facts, only “zingers” and “pwning the libs.”

  17. rpjohnston says

    What was even the point he was trying to make? What does it have to do with Canada providing the vaccine for free?

  18. jenorafeuer says

    @rpjohnston:
    Presumably the ‘point’ was that the U.S. developed the vaccine and Canada should be grateful for their ability to mooch off of the U.S. greatness. (Never mind that Canada had its own vaccine development in the works as well, it just wasn’t among the first to finish trials. And, yes, Canada’s purchase was for the Pfizer vaccine.)

    We’ve got way too much U.S.-style idiocy up here already with people insisting they don’t need masks, that’s part of why some provinces have had really nasty second waves. The vaccine can’t come soon enough, even if I know I’m pretty low on the list of people receiving it. (Not over 65, not in health care, not an essential worker, able to work from home with no problems… I’m low on the list, and I’m perfectly fine with that.)

  19. Ridana says

    I think the “point” he thought he was cleverly making was that while Canadians may have their free soshulist medicine, it takes Capitalist Americans™ to create the medicine they’re giving away. So he probably still doesn’t see he got pwned.

  20. says

    Ted Cruz is obviously an idiot, but what bugs me more is the larger argument, which is being weaponised right now against the demand for patent waivers, namely that the companies need patents or they can’t finance the development of these high-tech vaccines and other pharma products. Pfizer/BioNTech, like most other vaccines out there, have financed the majority of development through public money (government grants):
    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/1656A/production/_115989419_vaccine_funding_2x640-nc.png

    Consider signing the global petition for patent waivers and socially responsible licensing systems:
    https://www.patents-kill.org/

  21. chrislawson says

    Bernardo Soares@29–

    It doesn’t undermine your argument, but strictly speaking Pfizer deliberately rejected government funding to avoid getting tangled in multinational bureaucratic demands. Having said that, Pfizer is not the sole agent here. BioNTech’s vaccine development work was largely funded by government money, mostly from Germany and the EU.

    So Cruz is lying, as usual. The vaccine is not the sole providence of American capitalism, it’s the work of thousands of people from many different nations funded by many different governments and economic systems (including American capitalism). And those who developed the vaccine — scientists and public health specialists — are the sort of people he’s spent his whole political career doing his best to vilify and defund.

  22. davidc1 says

    @19 Over here in good old GB ,we have a saying “People Would Vote for a Pig ,if it Was Wearing the Right Colour Rosette ”
    Mainly said about tory bastard mp’s .