Week in review, 05/15 - 05/21

Photo: Boston Globe

Leading the nation in vaccinations, all remaining COVID-19 restrictions in Massachusetts will be lifted on May 29

‘Now is not the time to relax protective measures.’ Nurses union condemns CDC decision to relax mask protocols for vaccinated people

COVID-19 variant first discovered in India now has been found in the United States, with cases reported in Nebraska, Iowa, Nevada, and Tennessee

‘The highest vaccination rates are concentrated in the Northeast, while the lowest ones are mostly in the South.’ Big gaps in vaccine rates across the U.S. worry health experts

‘(P)eople should prepare for Covid restrictions to be revisited in the fall, especially given uncertainties around how emerging variants will impact vaccines’ effectiveness in preventing disease spread.’ Mask mandates might be going away, but don’t ditch yours just yet, scientists caution

Some major retailers dropping mask requirements, ‘largely moving to an honor system in which they trust that only vaccinated people will bare their faces.’ How can an ‘honor system’ be in place in a country without honor? Anyway, the mob rules: The anti-mask zealots have complained so loudly and for so long that they finally got their way. Widespread harassment and even oppression of those who still choose to mask is coming, and probably another major wave of new COVID infections. We haven’t gotten nearly enough people vaccinated yet, but everyone is just giving up and giving in before the battle is won, because that’s just the caliber of people we are now - a people without any honor or integrity to speak of

Fact-check time: No, HIPPA federal privacy law does not prohibit businesses from asking customers about their vaccination status

Fewer children spreading germs is always a good thing. The CDC says 600,000 kids aged 12-15 have been vaccinated in the past week

CDC study suggests schools are jumping the gun by removing mask mandates for students and teachers

‘Cabin fever’ is running high and human beings are very antsy right now. Kind of pathetic, actually, especially considering the pandemic hasn’t yet ended: Walmart reports stronger sales than expected, CEO says customers ‘clearly want to get out and shop’

Having spent years in service industries, I know the low pay, the mental abuse, and the complete lack of any appreciation for one’s efforts takes a toll: Changed by the pandemic, many workers are refusing to return to their old jobs

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

‘The New York state attorney general’s office said on Tuesday it has told the Trump Organization its investigation of the company run by former President Donald Trump is now a criminal probe, not purely civil’

‘If Trump has a political philosophy, one of its main tenets is toxic masculinity — the use of menace and swagger to cover his mental and moral impotence. And the mini-Trumps have taken their master’s lead.’ Michael Gerson: The threat of violence now infuses GOP politics, and we should all be afraid

Gutless sack of excrement: House Minority Leader McCarthy announces opposition to bipartisan committee to investigate the events of January 6

Veterans call out Sen. Ted Cruz after he says U.S. Army ad shows ‘woke, emasculated military’

Shouldn’t even give this twit the attention she so craves, but this is a particularly egregious and alarming analogy to make: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene compares House mask mandate to the Holocaust

‘They see themselves as heroic. And how can you be heroic in today's world? Well, you protect the children — you protect the children against this cabal that is out to turn them into sex slaves.’ America’s ‘Satanic Panic’ returns, via QAnon

Panic buying prolongs shortages and further drives up the price of gasoline. Watch, probably every single person who engaged in said panic buying are blaming President Biden for the higher prices

‘(T)hose advocating a nation of vegetarians aren’t helping. Like snatching a rattle from an infant, it only provokes an even more extreme response. And it’s just not a plausible solution: Most people like meat.’ Brent Cunningham: Beef isn’t being banned, but it’s always a staple of the culture war diet

Boston radio host returns to air day after controversial comments on pop music star’s ‘non-binary’ announcement. The real question here is, why is a 71-year-old man hosting programming on a radio station that plays music for teenage girls?

Noise pollution is a very real crime against nature. It is crucial we start recognizing it. All of this ‘freedumb’ is killing us (Note that I did not say ‘freedom,’ I mean free-DUMB - like being loud just for the sake of being loud, or putting others in danger during a pandemic because it’s one’s ‘right’ to not have to cover their mouths, and so forth.) ‘Noise from loud parties and dirt bikes is not only disturbing residents around Boston’s Franklin Park, it is also impacting the zoo animals’

‘(A) type of digital motion they once tolerated without realizing it was actually a strain on their systems.’ Endless scrolling through social media can literally make one sick

Supreme Court unanimously rules warrant-less home gun confiscation is unconstitutional

Disgusting: ‘A 6-year-old boy was shot and killed during an apparent road rage incident on the 55 Freeway in Orange on Friday morning, and the gunman remains at large, California Highway Patrol officials said’

Photo: AFP/Getty Images

Following President Biden’s call to end hostilities, Israel and Hamas agree to ceasefire after eleven days of fighting

Antisemitic incidents, as well as anti-Muslim hate crimes, sharply increase across the U.S. during latest flare-up between Israel and Hamas

The U.S. and Russia hold parallel military drills in neighboring Balkan countries

China protests the latest passage of a U.S. Navy ship through the Taiwan Strait

Radical Muslim advocacy group CAIR to boycott the White House Eid celebration after President Biden refuses to cave to their demands that he condemn America’s ally Israel for the crime of protecting itself against a violent terrorist organization

Photo: AP

Was pulling for Midnight Bourbon, and he does finish second ahead of the infamous Medina Spirit, but it's 11-1 Rombauer that takes the Preakness

Trainer Bob Baffert is temporarily suspended by the NYRA from entering horses at Belmont, Saratoga, and Aqueduct

Copyright 2021, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here.

Bad idea: The CDC calls for the fully vaccinated to stop wearing masks indoors

The CDC declares it is safe for fully vaccinated people to not wear masks in indoor settings. Keep wearing them anyway, folks. Nobody needs to smell anyone else’s breath, or have spittle spreading anywhere and everywhere. And this article details more pressing - and scientific - reasons to retain the use of masks. To be brutally honest, I don’t even like looking at most peoples’ faces anymore. So perhaps my position is a little extreme, but I hardly care. We defeated influenza and the common cold this past winter because (just enough) people were using masks. And don’t let anybody shame you into taking off the mask. It is a f**king piece of cloth, it was never an encroachment on anybody’s ‘freedumb’ and should never have been made into a political issue. And it never had anything to do with one’s manhood and all of that pseudo-macho garbage. To say nothing of the privacy it affords one while out in public. Yes, after this past year (two years, actually, given what I was put through in my personal life in 2019) I am more of a misanthrope than ever; the absurdity all around is literally killing me.

Copyright 2021, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here.

Week in review, 04/24 - 04/30

Seems to me the majority of people are no longer interested in reading news articles (or reading, period), and most especially if their narrow worldviews are in any manner challenged. Echo chambers that demand no critical thinking are so much easier and provide far more entertainment for the masses. As the old saying goes, of course, 'the masses are asses.' Always been true, and truer still today in this unprecedented technological age. All the information in the world at our fingertips, yet blissful ignorance is always going to prevail …

In defense of Dr. Anthony Fauci. Efforts by the far-right to portray Dr. Fauci as ‘some bespectacled Beelzebub’ fall flat and are ultimately self-defeating

Not yet close to America’s death toll, but at the rate they’re going it may not be long: India passes 200,000 Covid-19 deaths as new cases spike to a world-record 360,960 in one day, ‘widespread shortages of medical oxygen and beds’

‘Russia has launched a major campaign using ministries, companies and pro-Kremlin media to promote the Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine and spread fake news that the West and the European Union are trying to undermine the shot, an EU agency said in a report Wednesday’

‘The Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines were found to be 94% effective at preventing hospitalizations among people ages 65 and over in a real-world study published Wednesday by the CDC’

Beware of Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, another huckster having great success peddling fear and disinformation about COVID vaccines to evangelicals and others predisposed to be anti-vaccine

‘A man and his three sons are facing criminal charges after they sold more than $1 million worth of toxic industrial bleach that was fraudulently marketed as a cure for COVID-19 and other serious medical conditions, federal prosecutors said’

‘The Border Patrol says it has insufficient time and space to conduct coronavirus testing at crowded processing stations.’ This obviously needs to be rectified. At the very least, it should be ensured those coming to this country are not spreading disease

If Florida sees a surge in COVID infections soon, we’ll know where it likely started: 15,269 pack Jacksonville arena for UFC event

Massachusetts surpasses 640,000 COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic, with a statewide death total of 17,199; an estimated 30,000 active cases

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker announces the final phase of the Commonwealth’s reopening plan

Photo: AP

The United States formally recognizes the mass slaughter of Armenians by Ottman Turks as a genocide: Over a century in the making, and what leverage do Erodgan and Turkey really have to do anything but pout over it?

Turkish despot Erdogan calls on President Biden to reverse calling the mass killings of Armenians a genocide

Prayers for the innocents left behind: U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan already underway, Pentagon confirms

President Biden unveils American Families Plan, including provision for universal preschool: It is said the first three years of a child’s life are the most important in determining their life course, and I firmly believe learning should begin young. As soon as possible. Ideally, it would not be the federal government providing these services, and I’m certain the president understands this. The government should not have to cajole parents and communities into properly educating their children, but here we are. We cannot continue to allow our kids to fall behind so many other nations, especially those most hostile to us

‘No one will have to endure inane punditry that Biden has finally “grown into the presidency.” He is comfortable in his new job — and determined to do big things.’ Jennifer Rubin: Biden’s address to Congress proves we have an adult back in the presidency

Approval ratings must be always taken with a grain of salt, as data can always be twisted to suit an agenda and the opinions of most Americans are worthless to begin with. For whatever those ratings are worth, though, President Biden’s approval is considerably higher than his predecessor’s were at this time in 2017. What is most important is that this president is leading by example, conducting himself with dignity, and America is finally making a little bit of progress in the fight against COVID-19

Photo: PolitiFact

Fact check: No, President Biden is not going to prevent us from eating red meat

Fresh off election falsehoods, Republicans serve up a whopper about President Biden

‘At some point, the blame for modern Republicanism must pass from the party to an electorate that could cure it at once by levying harsher political costs.’ Janan Ganesh: Blame the U.S. electorate for the Republican Party’s success

‘The G.O.P. response to the Biden agenda has been anemic because the base doesn’t care about mere legislation, just their own cultural standing.’ David Brooks: The GOP is getting even worse, and Trumpians are having a venomous panic attack

Any wonder these people went to the desperate lengths they did to prevent a lawfully elected president from taking office? Feds execute early morning raid of Rudy Giuliani’s apartment and office in investigation of his dealings in Ukraine

Arizona Republicans choose a known conspiracy theorist to lead another futile audit of last fall’s election: Can gaslighting be any more shameless than this? Why are we still litigating an election that is over, and why are so many committed to this Big Lie when there has not been even one shred of credible evidence there was any election tampering? These f**kers lost and really should move on with their lives, but endless grievance is what the base demands and where the money is

Tucker Carlson’s anti-mask rant: A ‘useful data point for how American conservatism has transformed, especially in the Trump era, from a movement that (at least putatively) believes in limited government to one that primarily prizes marshaling the power of the state to punish those who disagree with it’

‘In a world where nothing is true, everything is permitted.’ Max Boot: The American right is becoming completely untethered from reality

‘White conservatives always assume they’re on the side of popular opinion.’ Absolutely true, and why so many of them accepted the Big Lie, even without real evidence. A well-reasoned response to an editorial writer who complained of ‘wokeness’ ruining his experience at Disney World

‘(T)his paragon of limited government is threatening to hurt companies who express opinions he disagrees with.’ Ted Cruz says the quiet part out loud

Sure, a multi-billion dollar, majority black sports league is going to expel its most marketable star to appease eternally aggrieved white people. Okay: Ohio bar owner refuses to show NBA games until LeBron James is ‘expelled’ from the league

Federal hate crimes charges filed against the Georgia men accused of killing Ahmaud Arbery

Conspiring to use a weapon of mass destruction charges added in 2020 plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer

Menthol cigarette ad, early 1960s

FDA moves to ban menthol cigarettes and flavored cigars: A terrible decision that is going to adversely affect - or at least seriously piss off - many black Americans. This country has far more pressing issues than to engage in this anti-smoking hysteria any longer. So it’s unhealthy, who cares!? I do not care. All of you out there have made life in this country and world so god-damn stressful with all your noise and bulls**t, and I’m supposed to feel sorry for smoking a cigarette? F**k off

Good: U.S. population grew over the last decade at its slowest rate since the 1930s

If sanity prevailed, this would be hailed as an achievement and not something to hide: Chinese government censoring reports that their population fell for the first time in decades

Alexei Navalny makes court appearance via video link, calls out Putin as ‘a king with no clothes’ and says Russians are being turned into slaves

Rest in Peace, Michael Collins. Apollo 11 astronaut dies at age 90

Pioneer League to replace extra innings with a home run derby: Utterly hate this idea with a passion. Settling games with a skills contest has made a joke of hockey, and it has no place in baseball. Play the game the way it’s supposed to be played, stop fixing that which isn’t broken

Got to hand it to Bryce Harper, the guy is tough: Phillies star says he ‘feels good’ after taking a 97 MPH pitch to the face from Cardinals pitcher Genesis Cabrera on Wednesday night

Copyright 2021, Sunking278. Stay up-to-date: Twitter – @Sunking278 and Facebook – click here.