Jon Letendre

There is quite some truth here. It appeared strongly to me, after considering many sightings and articles, that many Objectivists reacted to Trump in the same way as did all his other opponents at large.
Viscerally.
Ad hominems to the man, less his doings.
Feelings as tools of cognition.
And then justified their initial reactions with "his economic nationalism"; etc. etc.
Objective standards, I must add, which were not as rigorously or hardly applied to previous incumbents.

"Given that there is no evidence that they cause any harm either, proponents would rather err on the side of caution and encourage their continued use, stressing that there is no room for complacency when it comes to ensuring patient safety.25 This opinion is similarly echoed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines which assert that mask usage contributes towards ‘maintaining theatre discipline’.
Another unavoidable aspect of this debate is that of public perception. In the public psyche, facemasks have become so strongly associated with safe and proper surgical practice that their disposal could cause unnecessary patient distress. Indeed, the response on various medical forums following Mr Ahmed’s decision not to wear a mask during his broadcasted surgeries would reflect the prevalence of such a belief among the public.
It is clear that more studies are required before any absolute conclusions can be drawn regarding the effectiveness or, indeed, ineffectiveness of surgical masks. The published literature does suggest that it may be reasonable to further examine the need for masks in contemporary surgical practice given the interests of comfort, budget constraints and potential ease of communication, although any such study would undoubtedly have to be large and well controlled to prove causality given the low event frequency of surgical site infections. It is possible, if not probable, that if surgical facemasks were to be introduced today, without the historical impetus currently associated with their use, the experimental evidence would not be sufficiently compelling to incorporate facemasks into surgical practice."
This from a study in 2015 citing the Cochrane study(updated from original) I posted prior. So it could be that the reason we still use surgical masks is emotionally biased and not objectively necessary, historically performative.
If one of the most protective functions of masking in surgery is to protect the surgical staff from body fluid contamination from the patient, why do so many believe they confer protection against viron inhalation?
DM, still masking ?
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4480558/
 
  "Given that there is no evidence that they cause any harm either, proponents would rather err on the side of caution and encourage their continued use, stressing that there is no room for complacency when it comes to ensuring patient safety.25 This opinion is similarly echoed by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines which assert that mask usage contributes towards ‘maintaining theatre discipline’.
Another unavoidable aspect of this debate is that of public perception. In the public psyche, facemasks have become so strongly associated with safe and proper surgical practice that their disposal could cause unnecessary patient distress. Indeed, the response on various medical forums following Mr Ahmed’s decision not to wear a mask during his broadcasted surgeries would reflect the prevalence of such a belief among the public.
It is clear that more studies are required before any absolute conclusions can be drawn regarding the effectiveness or, indeed, ineffectiveness of surgical masks. The published literature does suggest that it may be reasonable to further examine the need for masks in contemporary surgical practice given the interests of comfort, budget constraints and potential ease of communication, although any such study would undoubtedly have to be large and well controlled to prove causality given the low event frequency of surgical site infections. It is possible, if not probable, that if surgical facemasks were to be introduced today, without the historical impetus currently associated with their use, the experimental evidence would not be sufficiently compelling to incorporate facemasks into surgical practice."
This from a study in 2015 citing the Cochrane study(updated from original) I posted prior. So it could be that the reason we still use surgical masks is emotionally biased and not objectively necessary, historically performative.
If one of the most protective functions of masking in surgery is to protect the surgical staff from body fluid contamination from the patient, why do so many believe they confer protection against viron inhalation?
DM, still masking ?

My watershed moment was the Nordstream sabotage.  Madmen are calling the shots and must be stopped.
 

https://mronline.org/2023/02/06/theyre-not-worried-about-russian-influence-theyre-worried-about-dissent/

These guys are so self-unaware they hang themselves unwittingly by their own virtue-signaling admissions. 8 years in advance Stoltenberg -somehow - knew the necessity of preparing a Ukraine military for war, either he's a prophet, or NATO had foul intentions and ambitions all along. Certainly not displaying the slightest intent to avert or defuse what could be the most dangerous war ever. The opposite.
Sure enough, Minsk, which next followed was made a mockery of. Apparently Putin was the sole dupe who bought into its implementation to end the conflict.
Zelensky also told Der Spiegel recently he had no intention of fulfilling his campaign promises for Eastern peace. Therefore, totaling four leaders (so far) who cheated and lied, with many more 'world leaders' who tacitly knew what was going on, and were complicit in the upcoming murders and/or evacuation of Donbass residents from Ukraine, and to bringing in Russia.
They got their anticipated war, I trust they choke on it.
Putin's use of preemptive force was rational and legal, whatever the UN Charter states on the matter. When all signs point to one is about to be struck one is entitled to the self-protection to strike first - here, the rightful responsibility to the safety of one's own people or others in danger . (Self-defense for just about any favored country, barring Russia, that is). And given the strong NATO militirization now admitted to, one can understand his demand for a de-militirized Ukraine--and further cause for stipulating a de-Nato-ized Ukraine.
There are some who can grasp the factual-causal  content of "implications". Many especially on the fanatical pro-Ukraine side seem blind to them. Maybe that's one dividing line.

That is incorrect. A fact is a fact regardless of whether it has "emerged" or not, regardless of whether it has become generally known or not. Our consciousness of the facts -- or our lack of consciousness of them -- doesn't determine what they actually are. (Thinking that it does is a primacy-of-consciousness viewpoint.)

For the "Russian Empire!" skeptics, the full Bennett interview reveals how much Putin was ready to concede for a resolution.
Here:
https://youtu.be/ZpCTEBaTFS8
"Bucha" was a most convenient event, coming very soon after and during those negotiations about negotiations.  Too convenient. There were certainly factions who wanted to go ahead with war, domestic or foreign. What better than an Azov-committed, MI6-conceived false flag atrocity to raise outrage and promote conflict?
Even accepting Bucha's doubtful veracity, the collective West still had *zero* rights interfering in a peace deal, nor using Bucha as a weak excuse. These were cynical/immoral interventions which - any fool could predict - have eventuated in losing, not dozens, 100's of thousands of lives, and all the rest.
If the West was so concerned about Ukraine civilians (or future atrocities), all the more reason to back the potential peace accords.
And have avoided 'punishing' Russians by punishing Ukrainians.
Anyhow, they well know by now that Ukraine's atrocities far outnumber Russians, and covered up for them. An "atrocity" is when the enemy commits it, apparently.
This argument doesn't wash at any level.
Not to distract from the big takeaway -- Bennett reveals Putin/Zelensky were amenable to compromises to end the fighting in the first days of invasion. Especially Putin.
It -might- have stopped right then.
An interview I only find on a few back channels
Let's see if NYT and CNN cover that story...

Not at all: just because I made a mistake about the facts, doesn't mean the (unmistaken) facts aren't there.
The task here is to determine the facts "out there," not the extent of my particular knowledge...

You are right, don't allow these rationalized objections throw you off. The article showing a large increase in shelling days before the invasion is officially true, known at the time by many outside the mainstream, and your moral take is just.
The Ukr-NATO psy-ops people, in preparation for the war they wanted, realized it's critical for Russia to throw the first blow, or be SEEN to do so. The unthinking public, obviously, must only know what it's told: the war started Feb 24. Nothing was going on before that, freeze your minds right there. "Unjustified and unprovoked" was a prepared response, justifying the prepared, instant sanctions on Russia.
They knew with certainty - they understood and exploited his values - that a mounting fresh assault on the Donbass would entice and motivate Putin to enter soon. (As I've argued, Putin would know the threats to the Russia-owned Crimea, the well-being of people in Crimea and Donbass, and naturally - to the security of Russia's adjacent borders.
Legally right or wrong, one can argue all day-- Putin was morally right.
Of course with Putin/Russians already viewed with contempt by longstanding indoctrination, all this was carefully orchestrated to nullify the Russian-Ukrainians and their plight (who had heard of the civil war, Minsk, etc., in the West before '22?), in order to not attract any sympathy for them.
Especially - for 'evil' Putin never to be publicly seen as greatly motivated by humanitarian impulses!
So the propagandist shills for the neocons came up with "Empire!" and the rest.
 

...resulting in its dissolution such that there is no Texas or Texan citizens to threaten in the first place. This would support my case even more. 

From the summary: "We speak to Scott Ritter..." [Russia Today's darling]
There is no need to watch further.

The U.S. is not and never has been a democracy.  Not should it ever be.  Democracy is not a good thing.  The U.S. is a republic and the U.S. Constitution requires that every state have a republican form of government.  "Republic" means "not ruled by a monarch" but the U.S. Constitution also has provisions against the forming of an aristocracy.  To have "republican spirit" as exhibited during the French Revolution is not to be merely anti-monarchist but to be fully committed to egalitarianism.
Technically Russia is also a republic, as is China and North Korea.   A country's form of government and its practice with respect to human rights are two different issues which can be in complete contradiction. 
Any moral claims the U.S. might have due to its intermittent internal respect of human rights have no impact on what it may do in foreign policy.  Being a good boy at home does not justify a world wide war of conquest.  Everyone has rights, at home and abroad.  The CIA and the State Department and its "NGO" apparatuses such as the National Endowment for Democracy or The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has no formal requirement to respect or recognize the rights of people in other countries to self-governance, so they don't. 
Next up is an operation against Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary.  
 

Well, this is interesting:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/whitney-setting-record-straight-stuff-you-should-know-about-ukraine
 

Ayn Rand has no authority, she is the standard for clear thinking here. 
I don't to write the full essay all at once, it gets boring to read and to write.
There is no legitimate gov't on Earth by Rand's standard.  All this breast-beating about illegitimacy by Americans is self-serving moralistic rationalizing so you don't have to feel guilty about sending hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths.  Make no mistake, that is what has happened here and America is the cause and bears responsibility.   

You volunteered to justify (in @tadmjones stead) that Putin has a legitimate right to the control of Crimean Peninsula.
You started:
I asked you to show  how and why history and language provides a right and legitimacy to this right? And according to what principles?
You responded with a hodge-podge of unproved claims (which I will simply ignore, as any other unproved claims):
Then you examine “what makes a government legitimate”, in particular the current Russian one. For defining what a government does, you quote Ayn Rand: „an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.” 
You infer:
So, in your view, if a government does what a government is supposed to do, then it is… legitimate! But you somehow forgot to quote Ayn Rand for defining a legitimate government, which is the one and only the one which „protects man's rights”.by protecting him from violence. But with this clarification Putin’s government legitimacy is OUT! Notice that you were the one who tried to use Ayn Rand’s authority, but did it very selectively. 
Then you continued a little bit but en route forgot what you had to justify – namely that “Putin has a legitimate right to the control of Crimean Peninsula”. 
If you wish, you may try to improve your - confused and unfinished -  demonstration. But please try to make a clear and reasoned case, and also avoid making claims you are not certain to be capable of proving – I will simply ignore the and you will be wasting your time and mine.

Putin apparently expected good prospects for further cooperation with Ukraine in the future on the basis of past ties and shared history and ongoing economic involvement.  When the U.S. simply overthrew the gov't in 2014 Putin should have begun to realize the ruthlessness of the opponent he was dealing with.  All agreements ever made with the Ukraine government had been abrogated when the U.S. dissolved that gov't in 2014 and made it a U.S. puppet state.
So what makes a government legitimate?  What does "legitimate" mean in this context?  There must be an objective definition of "government" so that we know what the referents are before it is possible to distinguish better or worse within the category.  Calling the Russian government illegitimate doesn't make it go away or make it any less of a government.  You must admit it to the category of government before you can begin to apply the standards of a proper government to it.   
Rand's definition of government A government is an institution that holds the exclusive power to enforce certain rules of social conduct in a given geographical area.
Defining and defending the territorial integrity of a country is one of the essential defining attributes of government.  The Russian government is not illegitimate for doing what a government does by its very nature and identity.  Anytime a government does something wrongly or incorrectly it does not cease to be the government (if only government reform could be so easy!).   
Also from the Lexicon, from Galt's speech we have The source of the government’s authority is “the consent of the governed.” The objective form in which consent manifests is acting in compliance with the government exercise of authority.  Governments collapse when a critical mass of people simply stop complying with it.  Up until the moment that happens governments wield real authority. 
The distinction between wielding real actual authority and wielding legitimate authority is reached by applying a normative standard to government actions.  The Objectivist philosophy of government is that government action should be about defending human rights.  There are people in this world who are not Objectivists and not even philosophical who have different opinions about what government action should be about.  Objectivists do not have the right to murder people with different philosophies or no philosophies because those people are still humans with their own rights.  The American government, which is not in the hands of Objectivists, does not have that right.  
 

"And this is supposed to prove that Putin has a legitimate right to the control of Crimean Peninsula? OK. Then: how and why history and language provides a right and legitimacy to this right? According to what principles? "
European/eastern European/Eurasian principles of might makes right?
If we take as a starting point Catherine's 'founding' of the region as a Russian entity and  look at a contemporaneous map of the wider region  and then compare that to a map of that region today , how similar are the lines of 'recognized' sovereignty , or take a map of the region in the 19 th century or early to mid 20th , what principles are being followed that explain the changes ? 
Was Czarist Russia a legitimate govt ? Lenin's? Stalin's?
What 'principle' is the USA following by fueling a war in eastern Europe today ?
 

Russia is a small population and small economy country that is getting older and smaller demographically every year so "problems with Putin's Russia" have never really mattered.  Eventually Russia will not even be able to afford its nuclear weapons, or will reduce to a merely token nuclear capability along the lines of North Korea or Pakistan.  Russia is not a threat, it a bogeyman displayed to secure funding for bloated American bureaucracies that have no purpose without an enemy to fight.  
Among the more absurd things that have happened within your lifetime, the change within the Democratic party from Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State visiting Vladimir Putin with her misspelled "Reset" button and Barack Obama at a presidential debate looking on with bemused incredulity as Mitt Romney claimed Russia was a threat to America to the present day Democratic party and the same people now seeing a Russian behind every rock should give you whiplash.  The pattern is: the party out of power uses Russia as an external enemy to rally support under a fake patriotism appeal.

Allow me.
I incorporate by the reference the basic facts about Catherine the Great, in particular "..With the support of Great Britain, Russia colonised the territories of New Russia along the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas. "  and " ... Many cities and towns were founded on Catherine's orders in the newly conquered lands, most notably Odessa, Yekaterinoslav (to-day known as Dnipro), Kherson, Nikolayev, and Sevastopol. "
Crimea as it is known today in its non-Muslim form is Russian.  It was founded by the Russian government by Russian people speaking the Russian language and keeping the Russian cultural norms in entirely new cities.  To this day it still is populated by Russians speaking Russian and keeping Russian cultural norms.  Crimea has been Russian for longer than Texas has been American.  Khrushchev reassigned administrative control of the Crimea region to the Ukraine region for some reason, some kind of political payoff or perhaps he just wanted to reduce the paperwork crossing his desk.  In no way did this administrative maneuver change anything about who was living in the Ukraine.  When the Soviet Union collapsed the technicality of Khrushchev's act meant Russia lost control of Crimea.  It is as absurd to think Russia would just let the Crimea go as to think America would let Texas go back to Mexico or become independent if some irregularity were newly discovered in the process of Texas' admission to the Union of States.  

America can't lose and exit the situation without financial obligations without Russia winning.   Even a military draw with present frontlines as new borders means Biden's Billions and his kickbacks keep flowing forever.

The CIA toppled the existing legimate government of the Ukraine in 2014.  Having failed at the espionage game of force, Putin trumped the Americans by resorting to more direct force.   Americans started this shit.  

What could go wrong? So the collective west for years builds and supplies the Ukraine regime's military powers in order to beat (a legitimately defensive) Russia - a nuclear superpower, btw - and expects that Russia will just fade away at the first sign of resistance. But they haven't, instead are beating Ukraine at conventional warfare; so you send more armour and 'advisers' and consider sending F-16 fighters, next. What could possibly go wrong?
Barack Obama said it exactly in 2016: "Russia has escalatory dominance". I.e: In their particular location, they are more than able to meet and raise the stakes at anything thrown at them by foreign forces, and could probably defeat a Nato alliance Army. And then what? How does Nato respond to losing? Obama's caution forgotten by the tough-acting kids in charge of the kindergarten now. You may go to war with Russia if you wish, on the strength of 'noble principles', but do so at your country's, Ukraine's - and the global - peril. The absolute sacrifice, iow. Spare me a lecture on what is "immoral".
You demonstrate little conception of reality outside the MSM bubble, you think reality must conveniently conform to a priori, acontextual principles. 
 
 

The sooner the Russians complete the encirclement of Bakhmut, liquidate all the fighters within and move on to eliminating Zelensky's Biden-blackmailing human sacrificing clown regime -- the better for Ukrainians, Russians and Americans.

The sooner the Russians complete the encirclement of Bakhmut, liquidate all the fighters within and move on to eliminating Zelensky's Biden-blackmailing human sacrificing clown regime -- the better for Ukrainians, Russians and Americans.