Stop the Idiocracy: September 2021

Monday, September 27, 2021

‘Progressive’ Democrats and nationalist populist Republicans alike holding the nation hostage

Getty Images

Petulant extremists on both sides holding everything up until they get their way, or merely for the purposes of obstruction. Everything is broken, and we are being represented by the very worst among us – a kakistocracy. Keith Naughton: Do progressives prefer Trump to compromise? -

Heading into the 2022 mid-term elections, the Democrats’ best asset is Trump. Despised by the Democratic base, Trump is only focused on himself and has little to no interest in helping Republican candidates. Using Trump to drive Democratic turnout is just about the only hope Democrats have to prevent a mid-term rout.
Enter the progressives.
Faced with the prospect of at least a Republican House of Representatives in 2023 and not enough votes even now for their agenda, one would think they would take what they can get and at least advance some of their policies. Instead, they are threatening to blow up President Biden’s legislative agenda and the painstakingly won trillion-dollar infrastructure compromise.
Already Biden’s numbers are reeling from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle — but that is recoverable. The public thinks getting out was the right decision and does not put foreign policy high on their list of concerns. As long as the withdrawal is not connected with terrorism against American targets or on American soil, Biden should survive.
But domestic priorities are another matter. An inability of the Biden administration to deliver on domestic policy could prove fatal. Yet, progressive Democrats remain oblivious. (Read more)

Dozens of Massachusetts State Troopers set to resign over vaccine mandate

Good riddance. The last thing we need are more right-wing nutjobs wearing a badge and carrying a gun, and if they’re afraid of a shot then they likely lack the common sense to properly perform their duties to begin with. -

BOSTON (CBS) – The State Police Association of Massachusetts (SPAM) said dozens of troopers have submitted their resignation papers as a result of the state’s COVID vaccine mandate.
The state is requiring all executive department employees to show proof of vaccination by October 17, or risk losing their jobs.
About 20% of State Police employees are not vaccinated, the union’s attorney said.
Last week, a judge denied a request from the State Police union to put a hold on Baker’s vaccine mandate for troopers. (Read more)

Global life expectancy drops at the fastest rate since World War II

Reuters/Gleb Garanich

Fairly significant damage for something that an absurd number of people consider to be a hoax. -

LONDON, Sept 27 (Reuters) - The COVID-19 pandemic reduced life expectancy in 2020 by the largest amount since World War Two, according to a study published on Monday by Oxford University, with the life expectancy of American men dropping by more than two years.
Life expectancy fell by more than six months compared with 2019 in 22 of the 29 countries analysed in the study, which spanned Europe, the United States and Chile. There were reductions in life expectancy in 27 of the 29 countries overall.
The university said most life expectancy reductions across different countries could be linked to official COVID-19 deaths. There have been nearly 5 million reported deaths caused by the new coronavirus so far, a Reuters tally shows.
"The fact that our results highlight such a large impact that is directly attributable to COVID-19 shows how devastating a shock it has been for many countries," said Dr Ridhi Kashyap, co-lead author of the paper, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology.
There were greater drops in life expectancy for men than women in most countries, with the largest decline in American men, who saw life expectancy drop by 2.2 years relative to 2019. (Read more)

‘(A) stronger bond between leader and followers than anything seen before in U.S. political movements’

Mass insanity, belligerent stupidity, economic ruin, and the fact Americans despise one another, are the very factors enabling the Fascist takeover of this dying nation. Hatred and ignorance are the two strongest animating forces in the universe - sorry to say, let’s be real - and the average person will fight to the death to retain their ‘right’ to be boorish, bigoted, functionally illiterate, and perpetually aggrieved. In their quest to ‘save’ America, the vast right-wing mob has instead put the final nails in the coffin. There’s likely no saving this s**thole now, barring drastic actions that our leaders and people are unwilling and incapable of taking. Excerpt from a vitally important piece by Robert Kagan: Our constitutional crisis is already here -

Critics and supporters alike have consistently failed to recognize what a unique figure Trump is in American history. Because his followers share fundamentally conservative views, many see Trump as merely the continuation, and perhaps the logical culmination, of the Reagan Revolution. This is a mistake: Although most Trump supporters are or have become Republicans, they hold a set of beliefs that were not necessarily shared by all Republicans. Some Trump supporters are former Democrats and independents. In fact, the passions that animate the Trump movement are as old as the republic and have found a home in both parties at one time or another.
Suspicion of and hostility toward the federal government; racial hatred and fear; a concern that modern, secular society undermines religion and traditional morality; economic anxiety in an age of rapid technological change; class tensions, with subtle condescension on one side and resentment on the other; distrust of the broader world, especially Europe, and its insidious influence in subverting American freedom — such views and attitudes have been part of the fabric of U.S. politics since the anti-Federalists, the Whiskey Rebellion and Thomas Jefferson. The Democratic Party was the home of white supremacists until they jumped to George Wallace in 1968 and later to the Republicans. Liberals and Democrats in particular need to distinguish between their ongoing battle with Republican policies and the challenge posed by Trump and his followers. One can be fought through the processes of the constitutional system; the other is an assault on the Constitution itself.
What makes the Trump movement historically unique is not its passions and paranoias. It is the fact that for millions of Americans, Trump himself is the response to their fears and resentments. This is a stronger bond between leader and followers than anything seen before in U.S. political movements. Although the Founders feared the rise of a king or a Caesar, for two centuries Americans proved relatively immune to unwavering hero-worship of politicians. Their men on horseback — Theodore Roosevelt, Grant, even Washington — were not regarded as infallible. This was true of great populist leaders as well. William Jennings Bryan a century ago was venerated because he advanced certain ideas and policies, but he did not enjoy unquestioning loyalty from his followers. Even Reagan was criticized by conservatives for selling out conservative principles, for deficit spending, for his equivocal stance on abortion, for being “soft” on the Soviet Union.
Trump is different, which is one reason the political system has struggled to understand, much less contain, him. The American liberal worldview tends to search for material and economic explanations for everything, and no doubt a good number of Trump supporters have grounds to complain about their lot in life. But their bond with Trump has little to do with economics or other material concerns. They believe the U.S. government and society have been captured by socialists, minority groups and sexual deviants. They see the Republican Party establishment as corrupt and weak — “losers,” to use Trump’s word, unable to challenge the reigning liberal hegemony. They view Trump as strong and defiant, willing to take on the establishment, Democrats, RINOs, liberal media, antifa, the Squad, Big Tech and the “Mitch McConnell Republicans.” His charismatic leadership has given millions of Americans a feeling of purpose and empowerment, a new sense of identity. While Trump’s critics see him as too narcissistic to be any kind of leader, his supporters admire his unapologetic, militant selfishness. Unlike establishment Republicans, Trump speaks without embarrassment on behalf of an aggrieved segment of Americans, not exclusively White, who feel they have been taking it on the chin for too long. And that is all he needs to do.
There was a time when political analysts wondered what would happen when Trump failed to “deliver” for his constituents. But the most important thing Trump delivers is himself. His egomania is part of his appeal. In his professed victimization by the media and the “elites,” his followers see their own victimization. That is why attacks on Trump by the elites only strengthen his bond with his followers. That is why millions of Trump supporters have even been willing to risk death as part of their show of solidarity: When Trump’s enemies cited his mishandling of the pandemic to discredit him, their answer was to reject the pandemic. One Trump supporter didn’t go to the hospital after developing covid-19 symptoms because he didn’t want to contribute to the liberal case against Trump. “I’m not going to add to the numbers,” he told a reporter. (Read more)

Saturday, September 25, 2021

Federal judge rules hospital employees can be required to get vaccinated

Reuters

No doubt many more cases to come, and I suspect nearly all of them will not end well for anti-vaxxers. -

A federal judge on Friday ruled that a Cincinnati, Ohio-area healthcare provider could require its employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or risk losing their job, in what appears to be the first ruling of its kind for a private employer in the United States.
The employees of St. Elizabeth Healthcare failed to establish that their individual liberties were being violated by the vaccine requirement of the hospital operator, which has the right to set employment terms, said U.S. District Judge David Bunning in Covington, Kentucky.
St. Elizabeth employees must get vaccinated by Oct. 1. The widespread availability of vaccines in the United States helped to reduce infections in the spring and early summer but the Delta variant has led to a new spike in cases and hospitalizations.
Alan Statman, who represented the employees, said they were evaluating their next steps.
Bunning's ruling is the first involving a request for an injunction against a private employer's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, said Mark Guilfoyle, a lawyer who represented St. Elizabeth.
In recent weeks, numerous large employers have begun to impose deadlines for employees to get vaccinated as COVID-19 infections remain elevated in the United States. (Read more)

Anti-vaxxers resort to demanding COVID patients do not go to emergency rooms, violent threats against medical professionals continue to escalate

Getty Images

‘Vigilante medicine’ has arrived, and it’ll be the death of us. NBC News -

Anti-vaccine Facebook groups have a new message for their community members: Don’t go to the emergency room, and get your loved ones out of intensive care units.
Consumed by conspiracy theories claiming that doctors are preventing unvaccinated patients from receiving miracle cures or are even killing them on purpose, some people in anti-vaccine and pro-ivermectin Facebook groups are telling those with Covid-19 to stay away from hospitals and instead try increasingly dangerous at-home treatments, according to posts seen by NBC News over the past few weeks.
The messages represent an escalation in the mistrust of medical professionals in groups that have sprung up in recent months on social media platforms, which have tried to crack down on Covid misinformation. And it’s something that some doctors say they’re seeing manifest in their hospitals as they have filled up because of the most recent delta variant wave.
“We were down to four Covid patients two months ago. In this surge, we’ve had 40 to 50 patients with Covid on four different ICU services, 97 percent of them unvaccinated,” said Wes Ely, an ICU doctor and professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “We were making headway, and now we’re just losing really, really badly. There’s something that’s happening on the internet, and it’s dramatically increasing steam.”
Those concerns echo various local reports about growing threats and violence directed toward medical professionals. In Branson, Missouri, a medical center recently introduced panic buttons on employee badges because of a spike in assaults. Violence and threats against medical professionals have recently been reported in Massachusetts, Texas, Georgia and Idaho. (Read more)

Friday, September 24, 2021

Leading retailer limits purchases of toilet paper, mostly due to supply chain issues and truck and driver shortages

Orange County Register

Increased demand due to the spread of the Delta variant is only partly to blame for Costco deciding to ration toilet paper. My gut tells me we’re going to see a lot more of these sort of issues in the years to come, and we’ll have persistent shortages of basic goods. -

(CNN) — Costco is once again placing limits on purchases of toilet paper, paper towels and cleaning supplies.
The Delta variant continues to spread across the globe, sending demand for those items higher. But that’s not the only reason why Costco is limiting purchases. The warehouse store is also having trouble finding trucks, drivers and shipping containers to get the items to its stores.
“The factors pressuring supply chains and inflation include port delays, container shortages, Covid disruptions, shortages on various components, raw materials and ingredients, labor cost pressures and truck and driver shortages,” said Costco CFO Richard Galanti, speaking to investors after reporting quarterly results Thursday evening. “Various major brands are requesting longer lead times, and in some cases, difficulty in finding drivers and trucks on short notice.”
Last year, Costco and other retailers were having trouble keeping those products on their shelves because of panic buying by customers worried that they wouldn’t be able to buy them in the future. Manufacturers were also unable to keep up with the surge in demand. (Read more)

Arizona recount finds that Joe Biden won the state, and Republicans are even bigger losers than we thought

Congratulations, Arizona Republicans, on making colossal fools of yourselves and wasting everyone’s time with this non-sense. Great work there. -

A monthslong hand recount of Maricopa County’s 2020 vote confirmed that President Joe Biden won and the election was not “stolen” from former President Donald Trump, according to early versions of a report prepared for the Arizona Senate.
The three-volume report by the Cyber Ninjas, the Senate’s lead contractor, includes results that show Trump lost by a wider margin than the county’s official election results. The data in the report also confirms that U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly won in the county.
The official results are set to be presented to the Senate at 1 p.m. Friday. Several versions of the draft report, titled “Maricopa County Forensic Audit” by Cyber Ninjas, circulated prematurely on Wednesday and Thursday. Multiple versions were obtained by The Arizona Republic.
The Cyber Ninjas and their subcontractors were paid millions to research and write the report by nonprofits set up by prominent figures in the “Stop the Steal” movement and allies of Donald Trump, but Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan said that would not influence their work. (Read more)

Thursday, September 23, 2021

ICU beds in Central Massachusetts completely full, nurses’ strike a major factor

Do these belligerents not understand they are collapsing our health care system? And if they do, do they care? I’m extremely worried for the future of this ridiculous country. Via WCVB -

WORCESTER, Mass. — The largest hospital system in central Massachusetts ran out of intensive care beds for some time Wednesday.
Officials at UMass Memorial Health said they are overwhelmed with critically ill patients, many of whom are battling COVID-19.
Some patients are being cared for in Emergency Rooms while waiting for ICU beds to open up.
A decrease in ICU beds at St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester because of a nurses strike is also a factor in the current crisis. Thursday marks the 200th day of the strike.
In a letter obtained by the Telegram, St. Vincent doctors urged nurses to return to work, citing long wait times and many COVID-19 patients.
The union responded saying the doctors should appeal to the hospital's CEO for a deal.

Wednesday, September 22, 2021

‘The United States in 2020 experienced the biggest rise in murder since the start of national record-keeping in 1960’

A massive uptick in the U.S. murder rate. Many more will be killed in the years to come as our society crumbles. Americans do not like each other anymore, and an increased murder rate is indicative of that. New York Times -

The Uniform Crime Report will stand as the official word on an unusually grim year, detailing a rise in murder of around 29 percent. The previous largest one-year change was a 12.7 percent increase in 1968. The national rate — murders per 100,000 — still remains about one-third below the rate in the early 1990s.
The data is scheduled to be released on Monday along with a news release, but it was published early on the F.B.I.’s Crime Data Explorer website. (Read more)

New York Times: Trump and company knew their claims of voting machine fraud were bogus, proceeded to press the issue anyway

Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA, via Shutterstock

Sick to death of ultra-partisan politics, and sick of anything to do with this orange f**ker. The one who organized a coup attempt to prevent a lawfully elected president from taking office. Clear-cut sedition, but no charges filed and everyone running around like headless chickens. Enough of this bulls**t. Excerpt -

Two weeks after the 2020 election, a team of lawyers closely allied with Donald J. Trump held a widely watched news conference at the Republican Party’s headquarters in Washington. At the event, they laid out a bizarre conspiracy theory claiming that a voting machine company had worked with an election software firm, the financier George Soros and Venezuela to steal the presidential contest from Mr. Trump.
But there was a problem for the Trump team, according to court documents released on Monday evening.
By the time the news conference occurred on Nov. 19, Mr. Trump’s campaign had already prepared an internal memo on many of the outlandish claims about the company, Dominion Voting Systems, and the separate software company, Smartmatic. The memo had determined that those allegations were untrue.
The court papers, which were initially filed late last week as a motion in a defamation lawsuit brought against the campaign and others by a former Dominion employee, Eric Coomer, contain evidence that officials in the Trump campaign were aware early on that many of the claims against the companies were baseless.
The documents also suggest that the campaign sat on its findings about Dominion even as Sidney Powell and other lawyers attacked the company in the conservative media and ultimately filed four federal lawsuits accusing it of a vast conspiracy to rig the election against Mr. Trump. (Read more)

Tuesday, September 21, 2021

The biggest threat to one’s personal safety, well-being, and sanity is our fellow citizens

The biggest threat to one’s personal safety, well-being, and sanity is our fellow citizens. Yes, to an even greater degree than the government. Always knew this deep down, but lived in blatant denial for as long as I could; which was for all too long a time. COVID-19 made acknowledging this reality unavoidable. Human beings are not basically good, as we all are demanded to believe; it is exactly the opposite that holds true. Human beings are evil by nature, and the entire point of civilization itself is restraining and taming this innate evil. Everybody wants their rights, but they don’t give a damn about the rights of others. Hence, we are seeing it play out in real time that libertarianism is no more humane an ideology than any form of autocracy. Trust nobody, for the biggest tyrants are all around us; they are us.

COVID-19 U.S. death toll officially exceeds that of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic

Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Some major caveats here, but still an important marker of where we’re at with this plague. ABC News -

At this point, at least 675,446 Americans have been confirmed to have died since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University, with thousands of Americans lives still being lost each day.
Surpassing the 1918 death toll is a dismal milestone, but experts suggest there are key differences between both pandemics that must be taken into account, given modern day access to better medical treatments and vaccinations.
"These are two different viruses, two different times in history, at two different times of medical history, with what you have available to combat or treat it," Howard Markel, professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan, told ABC News.
The influenza outbreak of 1918 began in the spring, with the novel H1N1 virus passing from birds to humans, and lasted for approximately two years. Approximately one-third of the world's population at that time, or 500 million people, was ultimately estimated to have been infected, according to the CDC.
According to experts, it is important to recall, when comparing data from the two pandemics, that the numbers of deaths stemming from the 1918 pandemic are just estimates. In fact, according to Dr. Graham Mooney, assistant professor of the history of medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, it is likely that these figures were significantly underestimated, because of non-registration, missing records, misdiagnosis or underreporting.
Likewise, experts believe that the current COVID-19 death count could already be greatly undercounted, due to inconsistent reporting by states and localities, and the exclusion of excess deaths.
In comparing the pandemics, Markel said, it is important to remember that we now have many more people living in the U.S. than in 1918, when the population stood at approximately 105 million, according to census data, compared to 328 million people in 2019.
The U.S. currently has a coronavirus case fatality rate of 1.6%, compared to the 2.5% fatality rate for influenza in 1918, noted Mooney. Normally, the flu's fatality rate is less than 0.1%. And thus, the rate of death in the United States, due to COVID-19, remains significantly below the one attributed to the 1918 pandemic.
Ultimately, when compared on a per-capita basis, the pandemic of 1918 was far deadlier than this one, according to Christopher McKnight Nichols, associate professor of history at Oregon State University.
"The difference is that 1 in 500 Americans have died now, and about 1 in 152 died in 1918, although our number keeps going up," Nichols told ABC News. (Read more)

Friday, September 17, 2021

Childhood obesity rates soar at the exact moment the little fatties should be losing weight

Lola Gomez/The Dallas Morning News

Obesity does not help anybody’s cause when it comes to combating COVID. Yet, as with so many illogical and counter-productive measures Americans are taking or not taking, people are only getting fatter – kids, especially – during the pandemic. -

NEW YORK -- A new study ties the COVID-19 pandemic to an “alarming” increase in obesity in U.S. children and teenagers.
Childhood obesity has been increasing for decades, but the new work suggests an acceleration last year — especially in those who already were obese when the pandemic started.
The results signal a “profound increase in weight gain for kids” and are “substantial and alarming,” said one of the study's authors, Dr. Alyson Goodman of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It's also a sign of a vicious cycle. The pandemic appears to be worsening the nation's longstanding obesity epidemic, and obesity can put people at risk for more severe illness after coronavirus infection. (Read more)

New York City restaurant hostess is assaulted by three visitors from Texas for enforcing city vaccine mandate

WNBC

America is becoming a violent hellscape. If I had any means of relocating - and one really does have to be reasonably wealthy to expatriate these days - I'd leave this rotten country so fast right now. This is so far beyond the pale. NBC News -

Three people were arrested for allegedly assaulting a New York City restaurant hostess on Thursday after she asked a group of diners visiting from Texas to show proof they had been vaccinated before seating them.
Cellphone footage obtained by NBC New York shows a brawl involving several people outside Carmine's Italian restaurant on the Upper West Side. Staff and bystanders intervened to break up the melee after it broke out around 5 p.m. ET, the station added.
The hostess, who has not been identified, was repeatedly punched and her necklace broken, police said.
One unspecified patient was taken to the Mount Sinai Hospital, the New York City Fire Department said, without stating their condition.
The three suspects, whose ages are 21, 44 and 49, were taken to NYPD's nearby 24th precinct station house, police said.
The attack comes as New York City this week became to first major U.S. city to require hospitality, entertainment and fitness businesses to ask customers for proof of vaccination to gain access to indoor venues. Any business that fails to comply could face a $1,000 fine. (Read more)

American Christian dominionists increasingly becoming more like Middle Eastern Islamists and preparing for war

Another vital piece on Christian nationalism and vaccine resistance. Excerpt -

Appeals to Christian identity were common during the Trump administration, and Christian nationalist themes were widely visible during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. But with Trump out of office and hundreds of insurrectionists now facing federal charges, hard-line Christian nationalists are increasingly fueling their movement with opposition to COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates, which they cast as threats to their religious and constitutional freedoms.
A June poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core reported that among the 13% of Americans who said they would not get vaccinated, white evangelicals make up the largest religious chunk, representing 28% of “vaccine refusers.” White evangelicals also happen to be one of the faith groups most likely to embrace QAnon, which claims the world is secretly run by Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Among vaccine refusers, too, a full 42% believe conspiracy theories associated with the movement.
There’s also a historical subtext: (Pastor Greg) Locke’s call to “stir up” school board meetings harks back to the strategy of the religious right in the 1980s and 1990s, which agitated at — and eventually took control of — school boards and other local government bodies in an effort to shift American culture from the grassroots up.
But today’s Christian nationalists are arguably more confrontational than their religious right progenitors. At a school board meeting in Lee County, Florida, on Aug. 30, protesters who gathered outside to oppose an impending mask mandate wore shirts that read “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president” and the logo of the recently launched “Conservative Christians of Southwest Florida,” which features an outline of the state emblazoned with the American flag.
As protesters and counterprotesters bickered, eventually exchanging blows, a pair of white-coated doctors attempted to walk by the crowd. They were promptly shoved and glared at by apparent opponents of the mask mandate.
Inside the meeting room, two men wearing the conservative Christian group’s shirt spoke against the mask order. Later, a woman gripping a cross pointed at school board members and denounced them as “demonic entities,” saying people like them are in “all the school boards” in the U.S., but that “all of us Christians will be sticking together to take them all out.” (Read more)

‘The Republican party is a pro-insurrection Trump cult and anyone who is not on board is cast aside’

Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (pictured) – one of just ten House Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump this past January – is leaving a once-promising political career due to violent threats from enraged nationalist populists. Tim Miller from the Bulwark -

The retirement of Trump-impeachment-supporting Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R-Ohio), in part over fears for the safety of his young family, is a deeply ominous sign for our politics.
It might be a Trump era cliché to say that “this is not normal” but a 36-year-old congressman in his second term doesn’t just retire. That is the start of one’s career, not the finish. Moreover, a 36-year-old Republican congressman sure as shit doesn’t retire because he is scared Republican voters might hurt his family.
That is not normal. At all. It is a flashing siren about just how dangerous the Republican party has become. (Read more)

Thursday, September 16, 2021

A prime example of 'cancel culture.' More aptly, a prime example of a rotten and diseased culture

An especially egregious example of the madness that is the right-wing noise machine. Ladies and gentlemen, Grant Stinchfield at Newsmax: The dictionary definition of a "chicken hawk". Useless a**hole sitting behind a desk yelling at an American who works in the trenches to save lives. Via Mediaite -

Newsmax’s Grant Stinchfield had a major-league meltdown where he screamed and cut off a guest on his show for mildly criticizing Donald Trump over the former president’s approach to Afghanistan.
Stinchfield spoke on Wednesday night with Joe Saboe, an Iraq War veteran who recently made headlines for his efforts to help people flee Afghanistan in light of the Taliban’s national takeover.
During the interview, Stinchfield and Saboe had a dispute about whether the current state of affairs in Afghanistan is a “hostage situation,” and the Newsmax host eventually made the argument that Trump would’ve never let this happen.
I can tell you, this didn’t happen under President Trump, and I know there’s a lot of people on the Left that want to try to blame President Trump. He wanted out of Afghanistan real bad. He was real frustrated, not being able to get out, but he didn’t pull out because he knew this would happen. In fact, we all did.
Stinchfield moved to dismiss Saboe from the show, but before he could, Saboe offered a counterpoint by saying “we followed this closely from multiple administrations. We know that Trump’s administration’s efforts here were fairly weak, that they were trying to limit the number of people that would get out…”
At that moment, Stinchfield claimed he was “low on time” and once again moved to terminate the segment. Saboe kept on speaking though, which caused Stinchfield to repeatedly shout “Cut him off now!”
“You’re not gonna blame this on President Trump on my show!” He exclaimed. “Don’t come on this program and take the talking points of the left and blame President Trump! That’s not helping anybody!”
Stinchfield concluded by shouting that “the Biden administration screwed this up from the very start,” and he also took some parting shots at Saboe for disagreeing with his “hostage situation” commentary.

Vaccines, somebody named Nikki Minaj, and what the hell else does anyone expect the president to do if they don't want him to do his job?

At first, I thought it was absurd that the White House wished to reach out to rapper Nikki Minaj after her inane ramblings on Twitter about vaccines and her cousin’s friends’ testicles. Why bother? That was until I heard a report on the radio this morning about fans of hers gathering somewhere or other and proclaiming that Dr. Fauci, etc., had lied to them. These celebrity nitwits, not for better but worse, do have influence over large numbers of stupid people, and America has an overabundance of those. If they’re spreading bulls**t that may harm people, then maybe the administration feels they have no recourse but to address this adolescent, belligerent crap. We’re about to become the wealthiest country with the lowest percentage of vaccinated people, and that is with us having the earliest and greatest access to the vaccine. This is truly embarrassing, but it can’t be laid at the feet of the Biden administration. Even as a candidate before being elected, Joe has been telling us all along to take all necessary precautions against COVID, and everything his administration has done to this point has been in service of eradicating this plague from our nation and the planet. But if a bunch of belligerents won’t listen and take heed, there is only so much the president and his administration can do. Except, that is, but to tighten the screws. And Joe Biden has done that, with his recent vaccine mandate. You, the anti-vaxxers, forced him to take a rather harsh tack that he clearly did not want to have to take. The anti-vaxxers point to back in December, when Joe said he had no desire to issue any mandates. I believe he really meant it at that time, but his patience was tested and the Delta variant hit. What else could he responsibly do? Just giving into the populist mob was not an option, not if potentially millions of lives were to needlessly be put at risk (any more than they are already are, thanks to these people.) Everybody takes this man for an idiot, but then everybody – not literally meaning ‘everybody,’ of course – have lost their damn minds in these horrible times. But he’s only doing what any responsible leader would be doing in this situation. But yeah, let’s reminisce about how the last guy said this virus had only affected fifteen people and soon it will be none, and how he deliberately undermined public confidence in doctors, nurses, and governors desperately trying to save lives but who didn’t sufficiently kiss his orange ass. Telling the world that everybody was out to get them; all except for him, of course. Yeah, wonderful leadership there. F**k off with that; real leadership does not entail playing to one’s fears, bigotries, and delusions, but rather it demands that we do our part. And it’s really not very hard at all. I’ve been doing my part to help eradicate this plague – and I firmly believe this plague is an act of God – how about you? Look in the mirror before pointing the finger at the man doing what he was elected to do.

Sunday, September 12, 2021

‘(A)n end to the era of catering to the irrational and coddling the selfish'

Bloomberg

Jennifer Rubin: Biden delivers straight talk, and wins kudos -

On Thursday, the Biden administration delivered some long-anticipated tough talk on behalf of America’s sane majority. It came from President Biden directly on covid-19 mandates, and from the Justice Department on constitutional order.
With final approval of the coronavirus vaccine now in his back pocket, Biden channeled the sentiments of the 70 percent or so of Americans who have gotten at least one shot. Biden declared in an address to the country, “Many of us are frustrated with the nearly 80 million Americans who are still not vaccinated, even though the vaccine is safe, effective and free.” You could almost read the thought bubble above the heads of 175 million Americans: “Darn right.”
He explained that we must deal not only with the delta variant but with “elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against covid-19.” With an eye toward Florida and Texas, where covid is surging, he lambasted leaders who “instead of encouraging people to get vaccinated and mask up [are] ordering mobile morgues for the unvaccinated dying from covid in their communities.”
Biden did not mince words about the recklessly defiant anti-vaccine crowd. “Nearly three quarters of the eligible have gotten at least one shot, but one quarter has not gotten any. That’s nearly 80 million Americans not vaccinated,” he said. “In a country as large as ours, that’s 25 percent minority. That 25 percent can cause a lot of damage — and they are.” He went on: “The unvaccinated overcrowd our hospitals, are overrunning emergency rooms and intensive care units, leaving no room for someone with a heart attack or pancreatitis or cancer.” He added that “our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us.”
Biden correctly understands that rationality does not work with most of the 25 percent of stubbornly unvaccinated Americans. While numerous enough to sustain a covid-19 surge, they are a distinct minority tormenting the rest of us and delaying our recovery. Biden’s wide-ranging vaccine mandates for employees working for the executive branch, government contractors and companies with 100 or more workers were music to the ears of the frustrated majority. Together with his threat to sue “states undermining protection that local school officials have ordered,” he signaled an end to the era of catering to the irrational and coddling the selfish. For a country suffering from the tyranny of a minority (one determined to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, block every recovery initiative and wink at political violence), it was intensely satisfying — a confirmation that up is up and down is down. (Read more)

Staffing shortages, due to vaccine mandate, force upstate New York hospital to suspend delivering babies

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It is frankly terrifying to consider the likely ramifications of mass civil (or not-so-civil) disobedience and unrest resulting from vaccine mandates. Anti-vaxxers are deadly serious, and they’re going to go to insane lengths – even tearing all of society to shreds - to get their way. NBC News -

An upstate New York hospital system said it will be forced to “pause” maternity services later this month after employees refusing to vaccinate against the coronavirus have caused staffing shortages.
Lewis County Health System is experiencing mass resignations as a result of its Covid-19 vaccine mandate, putting some services at risk, Lewis County Health System CEO Gerald R. Cayer said Friday. The maternity unit is already seeing staff shortages, with at least six resignations so far and seven others who have expressed an unwillingness to be vaccinated.
“We are unable to safely staff the service after Sept. 24,” Cayer said. “The number of resignations received leaves us no choice but to pause delivering babies at Lewis County General Hospital.”
Hospital administrators are working on "contingency plans" in the case more mass resignations put other essential services at risk.
The deadline for health care staff to receive their first vaccine dose is Sept. 27, according to New York State law. Medical exemptions are made for those who are allergic to or have had previous adverse reactions to vaccines, with certification from a licensed physician or certified nurse practitioner.
New York state does not allow for religious exemptions to its vaccine mandate for healthcare and nursing home workers, noting that the state has previously eliminated religious exemptions in 2019 during a measles outbreak. (Read more)

Friday, September 10, 2021

CDC: Unvaccinated eleven times more likely to die from COVID-19

AFP/Getty Images

Via the AP -

New U.S. studies released Friday show the COVID-19 vaccines remain highly effective against hospitalizations and death even as the extra-contagious delta variant swept the country.
One study tracked over 600,000 COVID-19 cases in 13 states from April through mid-July. As delta surged in early summer, those who were unvaccinated were 4.5 times more likely than the fully vaccinated to get infected, over 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“Vaccination works,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC’s director, told a White House briefing Friday. “The bottom line is this: We have the scientific tools we need to turn the corner on this pandemic.” (Read more)

‘Blinded by partisanship and populism, Republicans have lost all perspective’

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas. AP

Why would any sane person want to be associated with this party of lunatics? Excerpt from Max Boot: The hyperbolic GOP reaction to Biden’s vaccine mandate shows why it’s necessary

Perhaps the GOP simply objects to the government telling any business what to do? Except, oops, Republican governors and legislatures are doing precisely that when they tell private companies that they can’t ask for proof of vaccination. At least six red states — Alabama, Florida, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota and Texas — have prohibited most companies from demanding “vaccine passports.” So, apparently, Republicans think it’s okay for the government to force businesses to surrender to a deadly pandemic but it’s not okay for the government to mandate that businesses protect their employees and customers.
Perhaps the most tone-deaf reaction came from Gov. Greg Abbott (R) of Texas, who just signed a law effectively outlawing abortion. He now takes his stand on “protecting Texans’ right to choose whether they get the COVID vaccine.” As Molly Jong-Fast of the Daily Beast tweeted: “So conservatives want to make sure that women can’t get abortions but they are also against vaccine mandates because ‘my body my choice?’ ”
It’s hard to take GOP protests against Biden’s announcement at face value given how widespread vaccine requirements already are. In Texas, for example, the state requires that any student attending any public or private school must show evidence of having received at least seven vaccines covering diseases such as polio, hepatitis, measles, mumps and rubella. Those seven vaccination requirements — which have helped banish once prevalent diseases such as polio — cause little controversy. So why is pushing for adults to get vaccinated for covid-19 such a flash point?
The problem is that covid-19 has been a politicized pandemic from the start. It broke out while Donald Trump was president, and he was terrified that it would tank the economy and his reelection chances. So he consistently played it down, claiming it would miraculously disappear and that it “affects virtually nobody.” His cult followers therefore felt compelled to echo his Panglossian outlook by falsely claiming that covid was no worse than the flu or promoting quack remedies such as hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin as miracle cures.
The results of all this covid denialism can be seen in vastly differing vaccination rates. According to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 86 percent of Democrats have gotten vaccinated but only 54 percent of Republicans. That, in turn, translates into rising numbers of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in the red states. Over the past 14 days, the United States has been losing an average of 1,579 people a day to covid-19. More than a third of those deaths (570 a day) are in just two red states: Florida and Texas. The daily number of deaths in Florida — which has one of the worst outbreaks in the world — is more than three times higher than in California and more than 10 times higher than in New York. (Read more)

Thursday, September 9, 2021

President Biden announces federal vaccine requirement that affects up to 100 million Americans

Shutterstock

AP - Sweeping new vaccine mandates for 100 million Americans

‘We’ve been patient. But our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal has cost all of us.’ I applaud the president for taking this necessary action, and I share his frustration with the unvaccinated. Folks, a president is not there to kiss our asses and make us feel warm and fuzzy. He is not there to slavishly follow public opinion; he is there to lead. And all I see as I skim over the headlines is the MSM complaining that the president is either overstepping his authority or is not going far enough. I would highly suggest we all simply take heed of his words and not protest too much. It is a global health emergency, do your part.

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Regarding the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond

New York Times - Richmond removes Robert E. Lee statue

Regarding the statue of Robert E. Lee in Richmond: I believe we can acknowledge slavery and the Confederacy were great evils, and still acknowledge that General Lee was one of the single greatest military strategists in history. And was no fan of slavery, either. In fact, the historical record shows that he hated the institution of slavery. He lived in a time before Americans all saw themselves as one. Most citizens in the mid-1800s saw themselves as belonging to their state before belonging to the union, and Robert E. Lee decided to fight for his beloved Virginia. I need not be a right-wing lunatic, or a racist, or have any sympathy for the overall Confederate cause – past *and* present – to respect a great gentleman of American history. Statue or no statue, recognition given or not, General Lee’s place in history is secure, and it’s a waste of time for any of us to argue over it in the year 2021. This is all political theater – the grandstanding from the left and the handwringing over it from the right (and from Donald Trump, native of New York City with no ties whatsoever to the South.) History isn’t as black and white – pardon the deliberate pun – as most of us in this stupid timeline so desperately want to believe.

One meme displays why reason and logic is useless when it comes to combating fanaticism

I think this explains our predicament with these folks, and the psychology behind their thinking, about as succinctly as could be said ...

Sunday, September 5, 2021

A reminder that Russia is still using the Internet to divide and conquer America

Daily Beast

Arguing with trolls is pointless, particularly when there’s a 50-50 chance said trolls are actually Russian bots. When do America and its allies start pushing back? -

A major operation to influence public opinion saw comments posted on Western media articles in support of Russian interests, according to new research.
Cardiff University's Crime and Security Research Institute found 32 prominent media websites across 16 countries were targeted including Mail Online, the Express and the Times.
The comments were fed back into Russian-language media outlets as the basis for stories, researchers said.
The tactic was spotted this year.
But the operation is believed to have been escalating since at least 2018 and recently focused on the Western withdrawal from Afghanistan.
In one example highlighted by the researchers, a Mail Online story last month about the Taliban's victory in Afghanistan featured 2,500 comments from the public.
But some, it is alleged, were part of an organised Russian campaign.
By selecting a small number of comments, a Russian news article was then headlined: "The British have compared the rise of the Taliban to power with the end of Western civilisation".
This Cardiff researchers say it was one of 18 recent stories on the fall of Kabul that were produced using reader comments in the UK and US, supporting Russia's narrative about the end of liberal democracy, the failure of Nato or made a link to the willingness to support Ukraine.
The Cardiff team say this was just the latest part of a long-running campaign.
They identified 242 stories where provocative pro-Russian or anti-Western statements were posted in reaction to articles relevant to Russia. (Read more)

A third nationalist populist talk radio host dies of COVID-19 in just one month, all three having been rabid anti-vaxxers

Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images/TNS

No need for debate, we are unarguably in the stupidest timeline. Naturally, this story comes from Florida. -

A conservative Florida radio host who was dead-set against taking a coronavirus vaccine is now dead.
Marc Bernier died Saturday of COVID-19 after a three-week battle, his bereft radio station announced.
He was 65.
“It’s with great sadness that WNDB and Southern Stone Communications announce the passing of Marc Bernier, who informed and entertained listeners on WNDB for over 30 years,” WNDB radio’s News Daytona Beach announced Saturday. “We kindly ask that privacy is given to Marc’s family during this time of grief.”
Bernier had been afflicted three weeks earlier after hosting radio talk shows in Daytona Beach for 30 years, and after dubbing himself “Mr. Anti-Vax.” He also said the U.S. government was “acting like Nazis” for insisting people get the shot. (Read more)

Saturday, September 4, 2021

‘(T)oo inundated with information to take the threat seriously.’ All is not well with the collective psyche of America

Paullee Wheatley-Rutner via Storyful

AP - As flood alerts lit up phones, did 'warning fatigue' cost people their lives?

The alarm was sounded on COVID before it reached our shores in earnest in March 2020, and millions of Americans refused to take it seriously. More than 600,000 deaths and 39 million cases later, millions still stubbornly refuse to follow protocol and some still believe it’s a hoax even as people are dying all around us. So, what chance did the National Weather Service have when they sent out warnings of the catastrophic flooding that would engulf New York City and surrounding areas this past week? People shrugged their shoulders, or got annoyed, or otherwise didn’t take the warnings seriously. They couldn’t be arsed to take heed, and a few of them likely died as a direct result of their apathy, stubbornness, and willful ignorance. I am honestly beginning to believe that an imminent warning of a nuclear bomb heading our way wouldn’t move people to action anymore. What a pathetic country of losers we are becoming.