The Conservative Cave

Well, I expected a disaster when Democrats won New Jersey last year, and they haven't let me down.

New Jersey Lt Gov Dale Caldwell resigns after sexual harassment investigation

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/new-jersey-lt-gov-dale-caldwell-resigns-sexual-harassment-investigation

Democrat New Jersey Lt. Gov. Dale Caldwell resigned Friday after an independent investigation substantiated sexual harassment and ethics violations against him, Gov. Mikie Sherrill announced.

"The investigation found that the lieutenant governor failed to uphold the responsibilities of his office, and he demonstrated a pattern of behavior that does not meet the standards of this administration," Sherrill said during a news conference in Trenton. "The report documents serious, repeated violations of state policy, including ethical lapses and a substantiated finding of sexual harassment.

"I gave the lieutenant governor until today to resign. He submitted his resignation to me this afternoon, which I accepted."

Amazing what can happen when there is actual evidence.

Pancreatic Cancer Disappears in Mice After New mRNA Immunotherapy

https://scitechdaily.com/pancreatic-cancer-disappears-in-mice-after-new-mrna-immunotherapy/

Researchers at UMass Chan Medical School developed an experimental treatment for pancreatic cancer that uses a cocktail of messenger RNAs (mRNA) to activate immune defenses, break through the protective tissue surrounding tumors, and help immune cells recognize cancer cells as threats. Inspired by work at the school’s RNA Therapeutics Institute and advances in COVID vaccines, the approach combines several immune signals and tumor-associated antigens in a single formulation.

The study, published in Nature Communications, combined mRNAs encoding five immune cytokines with three tumor-associated antigens in one injectable treatment. Approximately 50 percent of mice with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma experienced complete tumor regression and remained disease-free for a year, including after therapy was discontinued.

“It’s unheard of to get a response like this in these models of pancreatic cancer,” said Dr. Parikh, a recent PhD graduate from the Ruscetti Lab. “There have been a lot of drugs tried in the lab that have had good initial responses in mice, but ultimately the cancer always comes back. This is the only study I’ve seen that has achieved durable tumor protection.”

1. This was in mice, so possible human trials, if any, will span years and are in the future. The prospect of success is somewhere between uncertain and unlikely, being realistic.

2. If there are human trials and if the stage 2 trial (safety and efficacy) is successful, during stage 3 there may be some compassionate use permitted during but outside of that trial.

3. The current post-diagnosis survival rate for pancreatic cancer is 14% - 1 in 7 - who probably  are mostly (almost all?) those whose pancreatic cancer was detected incidentally by tests for other conditions. IF trials of this treatment are successful this will bring a possibly great measure of hope to people who have had little or none. IF. That is my second-hand horse in this race. I lost a middle-aged uncle to pancreatic cancer, 2 years of wasting away and much pain in his final days.

4. As I've pointed out for some 5 years, I do not buy the bogey-mRNA Chicken-Littling. If The Vaccine were as deadly as anti-Covid vaxxers claim, there would be hundreds of thousands or several million dead in the US who, IRL, are not, and the US economy would be devastated by deaths by "Vaccine Injury". Borrowing from the late Clara Peller, anti-Covid-vaxxers' burger has no beef.

Are Lynchings Really Happening?

https://archive.is/KVbgl
NYT Opinion Column

Since 2024, to judge from news reports, there have been at least 10 Black people found hanged in public in the United States. Eight of these cases have been officially ruled suicides or are being treated as such given no signs of foul play. In neither of the other two has a white suspect been named.

But many people harbor suspicions. Civil rights lawyers, pastors and family members (as well as myriad commentators on social media) have speculated that these deaths were lynchings — homicides perpetrated by whites to sow terror in Black communities.

And now Congress is getting involved. Representative Ayanna Pressley, Democrat of Massachusetts, cited those 10 recent deaths in a letter this month that called for a federal investigation into all hanging deaths of Black people in the country. (She also cited a report of 70 “modern-day lynchings” between 2000 and 2025, though the report uses “lynching” broadly to encompass a wide range of deaths, most of which do not involve hanging.)

Pressley’s letter, which was signed by 58 other Democrats in Congress ...
...
But what Pressley and others are suggesting is different: that today, white people are hanging Black people for the purpose of terrorizing Black communities, and that local authorities are consistently overlooking it or covering it up.
In the cases Pressley’s letter cites, there is often good reason to think otherwise. Consider a few examples:

In 2024, Javion Magee, a 21-year-old Black truck driver, was found dead in North Carolina with a rope around his neck, dangling from a tree. There is surveillance video of Magee buying the rope.

In 2025, Demartravion Reed, a 21-year-old Black student at Delta State University in Mississippi, was discovered hanged from a tree on campus. Reed had sent his girlfriend suicidal text messages the night before.

In the case of Tasia Fortune, a 29-year-old woman who was found hanged from a tree in Mississippi last month, two people have now been arrested in connection with her death — but they are both Black men, which runs counter to the idea that these cases are reanimations of old-school racism.

... But in the face of the evidence we have so far, and given the incendiary nature of the claim, why would anyone say that the United States is experiencing a “national crisis” of lynchings?

One reason is a stylized wariness that Black Americans are often taught as a kind of wisdom — to be ever on guard that the bad old days could return at any moment.

Another reason is a belief that Black people don’t hang themselves because of the fraught historical associations with the act. “It is very uncommon for young Black men to commit suicide, let alone by hanging,” Raymond Winbush, a psychologist who has treated hundreds of Black men and boys, told The Washington Post.

“That’s not the way we do” is how Black Americans often put it in conversation. But we must ask, with all due compassion: Suppose it is? The cases in question are few in number. To say something is uncommon is to grant that it does happen sometimes.

Many were skeptical that Sandra Bland, a Black activist incarcerated in Texas after a contentious traffic stop, hanged herself in her jail cell in 2015. However, after the F.B.I. investigated the case, few now dispute that, tragically, she did. Surveillance video recorded a Black man, Malcolm Harsch, 38, hanging himself in Victorville, Calif., in 2020.

A sad truth about humanity is that racism will never be utterly eradicated. That does not mean it should not be answered and fought, but at the same time, viewing all life through a lens of race is an expression of racism.

But remember student loan relief was a bridge too ****ing far for these fascists assholes.

The student loan forgiveness was just another dem attempt to buy votes with our taxpayer money. It was illegal to start with.