;)
The Commentariat -- July 13, 2021
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
California. Don Thompson of the AP: "California Gov. Gavin Newsom can't put his Democratic Party affiliation on the ballotvoters see when they decide whether to remove him, a judge ruled Monday. Newsom's campaign missed a deadline to submit his affiliation to California Secretary of State Shirley Weber for the Sept. 14 recall election. Newsom's campaign said it was inadvertent and asked Weber, who was appointed by Newsom, to allow the affiliation to appear. She said the issue needed to go to a judge, so Newsom filed a lawsuit.... Sacramento County Superior Court Judge James Arguelles ... determined that the law 'unambiguously precludes party information from appearing on a recall ballot where the elected officer fails timely to make the designation.'"
Devan Cole of CNN: "... Donald Trump told a number of his advisers in 2020 that whoever leaked information about his stay in the White House bunker in May of that year had committed treason and should be executed for sharing details about the episode with members of the press, according to excerpts of a new book, obtained by CNN, from Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender."
Mike Allen of Axios: "... Donald Trump, in a book out Tuesday by Michael Wolff, says he is 'very disappointed' in votes by Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his own hard-won nominee, and that he 'hasn't had the courage you need to be a great justice.'... 'There were so many others I could have appointed, and everyone wanted me to,' Trump told Wolff in an interview.... 'Where would he be without me? I saved his life. He wouldn't even be in a law firm. Who would have had him? Nobody. Totally disgraced. Only I saved him.'"
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Tuesday are here.
Tennessee. Brett Kelman of the Tennessean: "The Tennessee state government on Monday fired its top vaccination official, becoming the latest of about two dozen states to lose years of institutional knowledge about vaccines in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. The termination comes as the virus shows new signs of spread in Tennessee, and the more-transmissible delta variant surfaces in greater numbers. Dr. Michelle Fiscus, the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health, said she was fired on Monday afternoon and provided a copy of her termination letter. It provides no explanation for her termination. Fiscus said she was a scapegoat who was terminated to appease state lawmakers angry about the department's efforts to vaccinate teenagers against coronavirus. The agency has been dialing back efforts to vaccinate teenagers since June. 'It was my job to provide evidence-based education and vaccine access so that Tennesseans could protect themselves against COVID-19,' Fiscus said in a written statement. '"I have now been terminated for doing exactly that.'"
Lisa Rein of the Washington Post: "Ousted Social Security commissioner Andrew Saul, the Trump appointee who declared Friday he would defy his firing by President Biden, on Monday found his access to agency computers cut off, even as his acting replacement moved to undo his policies. [Saul was trying to work from his home in Katonah, N.Y., where he's been working since March 2020 because of the pandemic.]... Saul said he had no public announcement -- yet -- on his strategy to remain in office as the 'duly confirmed Social Security commissioner.'... Saul [is] a wealthy former women's apparel executive and prominent Republican donor who had served on the board of a conservative think tank that has called for cuts to Social Security benefits. 'Stay tuned.'"
Texas. Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "Abortion rights advocates and providers filed a federal lawsuit in Texas on Tuesday seeking to block a new state law empowering individuals to sue anyone assisting a woman with getting an abortion, including those who provide financial help or drive a pregnant patient to a clinic. A dozen states have passed laws banning abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. But the Texas law, set to take effect in September, goes further by incentivizing private citizens to help enforce the ban -- awarding them at least $10,000 if their court challenges are successful. Even religious leaders who counsel a pregnant woman considering an abortion could be liable, according to the lawsuit filed in Austin by the Center for Reproductive Rights, Planned Parenthood and the ACLU on behalf of several other groups."
** Trump's "Lost Cause." Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "We are not the only democracy to have had a corrupt, would-be authoritarian in high office. But we have had a hard time holding that person minimally accountable.... This isn't the first time the United States has struggled to hold insurrectionists accountable.... Jefferson Davis..., Robert E. Lee ... [and] Alexander Stephens, the Confederate vice president..., [all died free men.]... Other, less prominent Confederates were also able to escape any real punishment.... Typical were those who moved smoothly from open rebellion to opposition to Reconstruction to serving as propagandists for what would become the 'Lost Cause.'... Leniency for defeated Confederates ... also contributed to a climate of impunity that fueled violence against Blacks and their allies.... The United States has never struggled to punish those radicals who stood against hierarchy and domination.... The two Red Scares of the 20th century are evidence enough of this fact." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The determining factor isn't so much the punishment as who does the punishing. If almost all Republicans had condemned Trump for inciting the insurrection -- and for his many other corrupt acts -- then it's likely Trump & Trumpism would be kaput. But most Republicans, after an extremely brief January 6 shiver, went back to defending Trump & kowtowing to him. That left only Democrats, some social media folks & a few corporations to "punish" Trump. Hardly a line-up that could convince the MAGA crowd. The same dynamic would have held after the Civil War. Had Northerners incarcerated Davis, Lee, Stephens & others, they would have become martyrs of the "Lost Cause." It would have taken Southerners to declaim against the leaders of the seditious war, and that never happened. The Great Unwashed, alas, will almost always default to, "He's a jerk, but he's out jerk." ~~~
~~~ Here's the Insurectionist-in-Chief talking about the January 6 "lovefest" over this past weekend. Worth watching the part with Trump's, uh, voiceover, which I've set near the top of the video:
The Washington Post publishes what it calls Part 1 of excerpts from Philip Rucker & Carol Leonnig's new book, I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump's Catastrophic Final Year.
~~~~~~~~~~
Jonathan Lemire, et al., of the AP: "Facing rising fears of summer violence, President Joe Biden is embarking on a political high-wire act, trying to balance his strong backing for law enforcement with the police reform movement championed by many of his supporters. His focus Monday was on crime. Biden met at the White House with urban leaders -- including Eric Adams, the heavy favorite to be the next mayor of New York City -- about increased shootings, as Democrats warily watch a surge across the nation. Though limited to what can be done at the federal level, Biden promised to support efforts on the ground to combat crime." The New York Times story is here.
Oscar Lopez & Ernesto Londoño of the New York Times: "As the largest protest movement in decades swept Cuba, President Biden on Monday called on the Cuban government to heed the demands of thousands of citizens who took to the streets on Sunday to protest power outages, food shortages and a worrying lack of medicine. 'We stand with the Cuban people and their clarion call for freedom,' Mr. Biden said in a statement. 'The United States calls on the Cuban regime to hear their people and serve their needs at this vital moment rather than enriching themselves.'" An ABC News story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Washington Post Editors: "President Biden promised during his campaign that he would dispense with the pampering ... Donald Trump offered to Middle Eastern dictators.... As for the leaders of Saudi Arabia, he would 'make them in fact the pariah that they are.' There is 'very little social redeeming value in the present government in Saudi Arabia,' he said. So why, last week, did Mr. Biden roll out the red carpet for Prince Khalid bin Salman, the brother of Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman? The former ambassador to Washington was directly implicated in the 2018 murder of exiled journalist Jamal Khashoggi, yet was treated to a host of high-level meetings, including with Mr. Biden's national security adviser, secretary of state and defense secretary. That's not the reception you'd expect for a pariah.&"
David Smith of the Guardian: "Joe Biden, who has been criticised for failing to use his 'bully pulpit' to defend voting rights, is set to deliver on Tuesday an aggressive denunciation of Donald Trump's 'big lie' about a stolen election. After months of sidestepping acrimony with his predecessor in a bid to lower the political temperature, Biden will argue that Trump's false conspiracy theories led to the 6 January insurrection and a rash of voter restrictions, the White House said. 'He'll lay out the moral case for why denying the right to vote is a form of suppression and a form of silencing,' said Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, to reporters on Monday. 'And he will redouble his commitment to using every tool at his disposal to continue to fight to protect the fundamental right of Americans to vote against the onslaught of voter suppression laws, based on a dangerous and discredited conspiracy theory that culminated in an assault on our Capitol.'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Yo, Joe, "every tool" would include an endorsement of ditching the filibuster for voting rights bills. ~~~
Hugo Lowell of the Guardian: "Top Democrats in the House are spearheading a new effort to convince the Senate to carve out a historic exception to the filibuster that would allow them to push through their marquee voting rights and election reform legislation over unanimous Republican opposition. The sweeping measure to expand voting rights known as S1 fell victim to a Republican filibuster last month after Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell and his leadership team unified the conference to sink the bill in a party-line vote. Now, furious at Republicans for weaponizing the filibuster against Joe Biden's legislative agenda, House majority whip James Clyburn is pushing Senate Democrats to end its use for constitutional measures, according to sources familiar with the matter. The rare and forceful effort from a member of the House leadership to pressure changes in the Senate underscores the alarm among Democrats that the filibuster may be an insurmountable obstacle as they race to overturn a wave of Republican ballot restrictions." See related stories about the Texas state legislature linked under "Beyond the Beltway" below.
Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "The latest effort to hold ... Donald Trump and his allies accountable for months of baseless claims about the 2020 election played out Monday in a Michigan courtroom, where a federal judge asked detailed and skeptical questions of several lawyers she is considering imposing sanctions against for filing a suit seeking to overturn the results. U.S. District Court Judge Linda V. Parker said she would rule on a request to discipline the lawyers in coming weeks. But over and over again during the more than five-hour hearing, she pointedly pressed the lawyers involved -- including Trump allies Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood -- to explain what steps they had taken to ensure their court filings in the case filed last year had been accurate. She appeared astonished by many of their answers.... The affidavits filed to support [their] claims included obvious errors, speculation and basic misunderstandings of how elections are generally conducted in the state, Parker said." ~~~
~~~ Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "The Republican Party's top lawyer warned in November against continuing to push false claims that the presidential election was stolen, calling efforts by some of the former president's lawyers a 'joke' that could mislead millions of people, according to an email obtained by The Washington Post. Justin Riemer, the Republican National Committee's chief counsel, sought to discourage a Republican Party staffer from posting claims about ballot fraud on RNC accounts, the email shows, as attempts by Donald Trump and his associates to challenge results in a number of states, such as Arizona and Pennsylvania, intensified. 'What Rudy and Jenna are doing is a joke and they are getting laughed out of court,' Riemer, a longtime Republican lawyer, wrote to Liz Harrington, a former party spokeswoman, on Nov. 28, referring to Trump attorneys Rudolph W. Giuliani and Jenna Ellis. 'They are misleading millions of people who have wishful thinking that the president is going to somehow win this thing.'... Some Trump allies, including Giuliani, sought to have Riemer fired after learning of the email, according to people familiar with the matter, but he remains employed at the RNC."
Ben Protess & Jonah Bromwich of the New York Times: "A week after state prosecutors in Manhattan indicted Donald J. Trump's family business and its chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, the company began removing Mr. Weisselberg from every leadership position he held atop dozens of its subsidiaries, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. The move could be a potential precursor to a wider shake-up at the former president's company, the Trump Organization, as the reality of the indictment takes hold for Mr. Trump and his senior executives.... Mr. Weisselberg continues to work at the Trump Organization, and there is no indication that Mr. Trump wants to cut ties with him...."
Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "... Donald Trump's interview on Sunday with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News encapsulate[s] how the former president has come to publicly embrace the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on his behalf.... Trump [declared] that those involved were 'tremendous -- in many cases, tremendous people, tremendous people.' He'd just finished saying that those who overtook the building in an effort to block the finalization of his electoral defeat had 'no guns ... no nothing' (untrue; a rioter was charged with having a firearm, and the crowd had a variety of other weapons from clubs to chemical weapons) and celebrating them as being 'military people, and they're police officers, and they're construction workers.' He repeatedly praised the rioters as righteous and innocuous, as being in a 'lovefest' with the police officers at the scene who, he suggested, stood by near open doors.... From the start, Trump's politics included an often explicit embrace of violence.... The events of Jan. 6 were a natural consequence of his dishonest claims and his obvious approval of force -- and of the failure of his allies to demand any accountability." Bump also gives Bartiromo what-for. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Katherine Huggins of Mediaite: "During Donald Trump's CPAC speech on Sunday, Fox News added a disclaimer that 'voting system companies have denied the various allegations made by President Trump and his counsel regarding the 2020 election.' The chyron appeared after Trump started talking about how many votes he received.... The network currently faces a $1.6 billion defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems (that Fox has asked to be dismissed) for their role in promoting baseless election fraud claims. Another voting systems company, Smartmatic, also filed a $2.7 billion defamation suit against Fox News earlier this year." MB: So while it may have appeared that Fox was attempting to practice some journalism there, they merely were practicing some legal defense against pending lawsuits. The clue: a "normal" disclaimer would have read something like, "Claims of rampant election fraud are untrue," but the Fox "News" chyron mentioned only that the companies suing them disputed Trump's allegations.
Sabrina Embler of the New York Times: "On Wednesday, the Entomological Society of America announced it was removing 'gypsy moth' and 'gypsy ant' as recognized common names for two insects ... because their names are derogatory to the Romani people.... The move by the Entomological Society is the first time the group has removed a common name from an insect on the grounds that it is offensive to a community of people, according to representatives from the society."
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Monday are here: Emmanuel Macron Is Tired of Trying to Reason with Those People. "Hoping to combat a possible wave of coronavirus infections, President Emmanuel Macron of France on Monday announced new vaccination requirements, including mandatory inoculation for health care workers and proof of immunization or a recent negative test to enter restaurants and cultural venues."
Sheryl Stolberg & Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "Representatives of Pfizer met privately with senior U.S. scientists and regulators on Monday to press their case for swift authorization of coronavirus booster vaccines, amid growing public confusion about whether they will be needed and pushback from federal health officials who say the extra doses are not necessary now. The high-level online meeting, which lasted an hour and involved Pfizer's chief scientific officer briefing virtually every top doctor in the federal government, came on the same day Israel started administering third doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine to heart transplant patients and others with compromised immune systems. Officials said after the meeting that more data -- and possibly several more months -- would be needed before regulators could determine whether booster shots were necessary."
Sharon LaFraniere & Noah Weiland of the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration warned on Monday that Johnson & Johnson's coronavirus vaccine can lead to an increased risk of a rare neurological condition known as Guillain-Barré syndrome, another setback for a vaccine that has largely been sidelined in the United States. Although regulators have found that the chances of developing the condition are low, they appear to be three to five times higher among recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine than among the general population in the United States, according to people familiar with the decision. The warning was attached to fact sheets about the vaccine for providers and patients."
Bob Herman of Axios: "More than half of unvaccinated Americans live in households that make less than $50,000 annually, according to the latest Census Bureau data.... Making it easier for the working poor to get the COVID-19 vaccine, without dinging their already-low incomes, could help boost the country's vaccination rates.... Vaccination has been politicized, but juggling work schedules and child care could be bigger factors than politics." According to a chart by the U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey, which Herman republishes, 22 percent of people living households earning less than $25K have not been vaccinated; only 3.4% of those in households of $200K & up haven't been vaccinated. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: "What used to be the conservative movement in this country is becoming a death cult. The measure of its power is less in ballots cast than in how many people die needlessly in service of this twisted worldview. This reality was on view over the weekend in Dallas at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where attendees cheered when Alex Berenson, who has made himself a Fox News folk hero for spreading misinformation about covid-19 vaccines, crowed about the fact that fewer Americans were getting their shots than public health officials had hoped.... And the worst-case possibility is that covid-19 roars back -- along with the restrictions and isolations Americans thought we'd left behind.... Under many circumstances, those who choose to gamble with their lives have the right to do so. But refusing to get vaccinated isn't like skydiving or shooting heroin: It's a threat to the rest of us as well."
Philip Bump of the Washington Post, in a post on what a deceptive incompetent Gov. Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) is, presents an argument for Covid-19 vaccinations that even dimwits can understand: "It's like making driving under the influence legal and booze free, and touting how much confidence you put in the public to manage their own affairs. Except, of course, that a lot of people killed in the resulting car accidents might be dying from the personal decisions of others, just as many of those infected with the coronavirus in [Noem's] state were probably infected while the pandemic was raging despite their own efforts not to be."
Beyond the Beltway
California. Robert Jablon of the AP: "A federal judge on Monday gave final approval to a $73 million settlement of a lawsuit that alleged some 6,000 women were sexually abused by a former University of California, Los Angeles gynecologist. The 2019 class-action suit involved allegations that from 1983 to 2018, Dr. James Heaps groped women, simulated intercourse with an ultrasound probe or made inappropriate comments during examinations at the UCLA student health center, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center or his on-campus office. The suit also accused UCLA of failing to take action against Heaps despite complaints and of having a 'policy of indifference' to reports of sexual misconduct.... UCLA didn't acknowledge wrongdoing in reaching the settlement last year, but the university did agree to change its procedures for preventing, identifying, investigating and dealing with sexual misconduct."
Louisiana. Debbie Elliott of NPR: "Four-term Democratic Gov. Edwin Edwards, who also served prison time for corruption, died Monday at his home in Gonzales, La. He was 93. A statement from his family said he'd been in hospice care for the past week with respiratory problems. Edwards was the last of the larger-than-life populists who once dominated Louisiana politics. He built his career on political patronage, public works, and sheer force of personality." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Texas. Reid Epstein & Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times: "Texas Democrats fled the state on Monday in a last-ditch effort to prevent the passage of a restrictive new voting law by the Republican-controlled Legislature, heading to Washington to draw national attention to their cause. The group left Austin in midafternoon on a pair of chartered flights that arrived at Dulles International Airport just before sunset. Fifty-one of the 67 State House Democrats flew on the planes, leaders of the delegation said, and several others arrived separately in Washington; that's enough to prevent Texas Republicans from attaining a quorum, which is required to conduct state business.... The move could paralyze the Legislature for weeks if Democrats remain out of state until this special session ends in August." An NBC News story is here. (Both the NYT & NBC stories are updates of stories linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Matt Houston of KENS5 San Antonio: "Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ... said law enforcement will arrest those Democrats when they return to Texas in a procedure unanimously outlined and agreed to by House members. They would return to the capitol, effectively forced to maintain quorum. But troopers cannot arrest lawmakers who are out of state."
Way Beyond
Cuba. Tom Phillips & Ed Augustin of the Guardian: "The Cuban president, Miguel Díaz-Canel, has attacked the 'shameful delinquents' he claimed were trying to 'fracture' his country's communist revolution after the Caribbean island witnessed its largest anti-government protests in nearly three decades. As Cuban officials blamed the US for Sunday;s demonstrations, Joe Biden called on the island;s leaders to hear its citizens' 'clarion call for freedom'.... In a televised address on Monday morning Díaz-Canel, who recently succeeded Raúl Castro as the Communist party's top figure, painted the protests as part of a United States-backed, social media-driven plot to stir up public discontent and overthrow the Cuban regime.... Rogelio Polanco Fuentes, a top party official who runs its ideology department, denounced the protests as part of a well-funded US-sponsored effort to create 'instability and chaos' in Cuba, which is currently experiencing its worst economic slump in decades as well as a worsening Covid crisis."
News Ledes
CNBC: "Inflation surged in June at its fastest pace in nearly 13 years amid a burst in used vehicle costs and price increases in food and energy, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. The consumer price index increased 5.4% from a year earlier, the largest jump since August 2008, just before the worst of the financial crisis. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been expecting a 5% gain." The New York Times story is here.
New York Times: "Richard C. Lewontin, widely considered one of the most brilliant geneticists of the modern era and a prolific, elegant and often caustic writer who condemned the facile use of genetics and evolutionary biology to 'explain' human nature, died on Sunday at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 92."
Share Article
Reader Comments (18)
That Fox News chyron should have read: "Donald Trump is a
pathological liar. Here he goes again."
Tonight, Major League Baseball will hold its 91st All-Star Game. And it won’t be in Georgia, the site originally selected to host this annual extravaganza. Why? Racism. Hatred. Election fixing. The usual Confederate priorities.
The game was moved from Atlanta’s Truist Park (not to be confused with truest, Truist being a giant banking corporation headquartered in North Carolina, another hotbed of Confederate anti-democratic activity) after the Georgia Party of Traitors amd Haters rushed to pass the ridiculously titled Election Integrity Act (astoundingly, they couldn’t fit some variation of “patriot” in there) designed to fix future elections in favor of their party.
This is the third major sporting event to be moved because of Republican bigotry, the others being the NBA All-Star Game and the Super Bowl.
It’s not a lot, but it ain’t nothin’. Hopefully more and more American corporations and organizations will realize that racism and bigotry are not as good for the bottom line as they used to be. So even if you’re not a baseball fan, you can enjoy a bit of the old schadenfreude that the haters are whining about being “victimized”. Again! Poor dears.
Forrest, tsk, tsk. You’re hoping for fairness and balance from Fox?? Monkeys will fly out of Ailes’ coffin before that happens.
@Forrest Morris: Thanks. Yours was definitely a better suggestion than mine.
@Akhilleus: Thanks to your comment, I might just watch some baseball tonight.
FAUCI OUCHE:
The monsters among us: new video depicting one of them.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lauren-boebert-monster-don-winslow_n_60ed320fe4b0a771e7fcf363
Yes, AK, thanks for the sport's info–--"It’s not a lot, but it ain’t nothin’" yes! inch by inch we may be able to make some headways like the Texas dems "taking it to the streets" by leaving.
And Bump calling Noem a "deceptive incompetent" and that nice, mild mannered Eugene Robinson writing that the conservative movement is becoming a "death cult" and that frustrated judge throwing Fatty's lawyers under the bus. We have got to believe that sanity prevails, that truth overcomes the lies, that in the end our fragile democracy can overcome the onslaught!
The piece yesterday re: the gold fish was stunning and I sent it to my scientist son who early on learned how to be alone in his room and now takes off alone on long hikes and goes fishing but after a catch lets them go. Here 's his response:
"Yeah, I imagine these are dumped into ponds periodically by people who don't want to take care of their fish anymore. I know there has been success with certain carp species to use them as weed/algae control in ponds/lakes. There is a pond that I fish in and it is very healthy mainly because they introduced carp a few decades ago and they eat most of the invasive vegetation that periodically gets introduced into the pond. I think more ponds around here should do that instead of relying on chemical control."
Don't know how seriously to take the accounts now emerging of the Pretender's behavior on election night and in his last days in office which appear today in both the WaPo and the NYTimes, but the depictions are all of a man who has gone entirely over the edge. So much strains credulity. No one could possibly behave that way. No president could know so little about elections, vote counting, and how it all works. Clearly, the Pretender never had any idea how much of a fluke his own 2016 electoral college victory was.
Heard something similar about the Pretender's fraying mind on the TRM show last night and if all these reports are accurate, the Republican standard bearer is as nutty as we have long suspected and believed.
Disturbing to read and hear, but nothing really new.
But the willingness of state Republican organizations, like those in Ohio and Alaska that Maddow reported on, to get behind his nuttiness, is far more worrisome. They provide not just cover for his insanity but reflect and compound it to the extent that the vast majority of the once Grand Old Party is now officially off its rocker.
I don't know how many of their recent decision are attributable to mere cynicism , but regardless of the motivation at the top of these state organizations, their backing of Senate candidates that refuse to acknowledge the election's results or oppose any Republican incumbent who voted for impeachment or even implied that Biden won, stands as public acknowledgment that the Pretender's appeal is entirely dependent on a base that is as delusional as he is.
There are millions of them and they all belong in a madhouse.
We are a divided country.
Blue States and Bedlam.
@Akhilleus
I'm with you and am all for good news, but would take more comfort from your post if today's MLB, the NFL and the NBA athletes all had white faces.
A friend just sent this to me:
""I feel like a vaccination in a weird way is just generally kind of going against nature. Maybe there's just an ebb and flow to life where [some disease] is supposed to wipe out a certain amount of people and that's just kind of the way evolution goes. Vaccines kind of stand in the way of that."
-- Newsmax host Rob Schmitt
The view from Mile High. I have mixed feelings about the All Star Game being moved here. Of course I support the protest element, but I feel for those in Atlanta who have lost income (largely those whose voting is being attacked). What it means for Denver is hoards coming here probably largely unvaxed and unmasked, bringing more virus with them to spread (unless that lot will also protest Denver--who knows?). For me the vaxing comes down protecting the grandchildren, those too poor to get to a vaccination site, and those high risk patients like my husband on the heart transplant list.
And at the end of the game tonight, I doubt we'll be able to see the fireworks--the smoke from the fires all over the west is funneling into the front range and only an orange sliver of moon was barely visible in the sky.
@Linda from Denver: Very good points, all. In fact, Atlanta & every county around it voted blue. And, it's reasonable to suppose, those voters support voting rights for all. So the people who lost jobs selling peanuts & crackerjacks at the old ball game were more likely than not to be Democratic voters.
And I'm sorry about the fires.
Newsmax Schmitt seems to be on to something there. If it weren't for vaccines, penicillin and other antibiotics, the invention of agriculture, the wheel and other unnatural developments like boilers and electric generation and transmisssion (and, say, refrigerators), our population would be much smaller. Naturally.
But we wouldn't know it because we probably would not have invented movable type, radio, or even cuneiform tablets.
But we can be sure that Rob and his ilk assume that THEY would be alive and thriving and be on cable TV. Naturally.
(His musings reminded me of some pretty dumb adolescent conversations, like "Hey, if they'd never invented bricks, what kind of dorm would this be, and how many stories?" And some earnest CivE major would drag out a slide rule and start working on it.)
The ever-classy RNC plans to air an ad during theAll-Star Game claiming that Georgia wuz robbed of the Game by the evil Democrats.
https://www.mediaite.com/sports/rnc-unveils-ad-its-airing-during-mlb-all-star-game-trashing-league-for-moving-the-event-from-atlanta-we-were-robbed/
Much as I love baseball I won’t be watching any of the ASG - it has become too long, too late, and too bloated for my taste, even with Max Scherzer and Shohei Otani putting on a show.
Reading Texas governor Abbotts tantrum that all of the Democrats who left the state will be arrested and held in the capital and also threatening to hold special sessions until the 2022 election makes me wonder if there is a provision in Texas "law" for declaring a seat in the legislature vacant?
I noticed in two stories today, Esquire and here, the word "misinformation" is used. I am soooo fed up with this word being used, along with its sister words, "misinformed" and "misinforming" and "misinform." MSM allows this so that they can save themselves from defamation, maybe? It should be "lies," "lied," "lying" and "lie." I am all in with no longer sheltering the liars and thieves and vicious lunatics from being accused of being the liars and pathological liars they are. Maybe if the MSM had more guts, and "grit" (thanks, Kristi Idiot-Face) we wouldn't be attempting to vaccinate such an army of stupids and ignoramuses in spite of the fact that we are better off if they perish of COVID. I officially don't care if all the next deaths are of people who deathbed-confess that the calamity we have lived through is "real." And anyone who claims to be a follower of the Worst Person In The World (thanks, Keith O--)officially will get no more sympathy or empathy when their crummy lives are in the dumpster... The sad part is that the MSM isn't reading my screed, so it thinks it is just fine being arch, thank you.
Covid outbreaks in Bedlam summer camps.
https://apnews.com/article/health-coronavirus-pandemic-michael-brown-7dd22f4efe101603c2c4caf531c980dc
Praying away the Covid seems to work as well as praying away the gay...
OMG! WTF!? Appeals court rules that the prohibition on gun sales to individuals less that 21 years old is unconstitutional. I guess that then means that alcohol consumption by anyone older than 6 weeks in vitro is OK too.
Just in case you missed it, the NYT reports a bit over 23,000 C-19 cases today, up 94% in the past 14 days. I'm not surprised a\one bit.
A reason to keep an eye on shitheads from the past who slither quietly into the future (see Dick Cheney et al.): https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/13/ken-starr-jeffrey-epstein-book