Finally Friday Reads: Mask up! Vax up!
Posted: July 30, 2021 Filed under: COVID19, morning reads | Tags: Coronavirus Delta variant, Human Variant Petri Dishes, Mask Up, Plague Rats, Vax UP 18 Comments
A cartoon from a Dec. 6, 1918, issue of the Fort Wayne Sentinel.
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Well, this is another fine mess that Republicans have gotten us into! I watched coverage of a meeting of the St Louis County Council meeting with horror. It was filled with women with that Clairol FoxNewsBlonde look and screaming red-faced old men. It was about the recently reinstated mask mandate that the Council threw out over the objections of its Public Health Officials and the screaming, taunting, racist screams of the previously mentioned burbie nutterz.
This was after I finished a zoom chat with the Drs and my new granddaughters. I’ve been trying to tell myself that kids used to go West in this country and it took months for the Pony Express to get letters between there and New Orleans so this is better than that. But, then I remember this doesn’t have to be this way. It’s those shrieking whackos that are killing people and preventing us from having normal lives. They’re also killing us with misinformation so the reticent become more firmly afraid of the vaccine.
St. Louis County’s acting health director said he was humiliated, attacked and called racist slurs during a council meeting on a newly reinstated mask mandate.
The director, Faisal Khan, was asked to present at Tuesday’s public meeting as council members considered terminating a mandate that St. Louis County Executive Sam Page put in place to slow the spread of the Covid-19 delta variant.
Khan said in a phone interview on Thursday that the crowd was rowdy before the meeting even began because some of them had attended a political rally held outside the venue.
“The anger was already palpable,” he told NBC News. “By the time I was asked to come to the podium, the train had left the station and it was only going to go one way.”
Khan detailed what happened at the meeting in a letter to Council Chairwoman Rita Days, who was in attendance.
“My time before the Council began with a dog-whistle question from Councilman Tim Fitch, who said he wanted to emphasize for the assembled crowd that I was not from this country,” he wrote in the letter.
Khan, who said he became a U.S. citizen in 2013, wrote that Fitch should have known most of the people in the crowd were “from the ‘MAGA’ movement” because they kept chanting “Trump 2024.”
Khan wrote in his letter that during the meeting Fitch’s friend Mark McCloskey posted on social media that mask mandates are “un-American.” Khan told Days that he believes Fitch and McCloskey’s actions were an attempt to “stoke xenophobia against me.”
June 28,2020. Notice who has a mask on?
You may remember Mark McCloskey from his previous racist attack where he waved a semi-automatic rifle with his wife at a Peaceful Black Lives Matters Marches. His wife wears that same shade of Clairol FoxNewsBlonde. Well, they got to speak at the RNC and now they’re back spreading the racism as freely as possible while threatening public health officials.
The NBC article above notes that the same level of threats aimed at folks working elections is now aimed at public health officials.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, public health officials have been targeted and attacked. This week, prosecutors in Maryland announced a man had been arrested and charged in federal court with sending emails that threatened to harm and kill Dr. Anthony Fauci, National Institutes of Health Director Dr. Francis Collins, and their families.
Khan said he believes they have been used as pawns for what some people have turned into a political battle.
“We’ve received so many threats, of all kinds, it is jarring. Public health is not the enemy. We don’t deserve to be targeted,” he said. “We are in the midst of the worst public health crisis to hit the world in 100 years. We should not be worried about our own safety in deliberative sessions with legislative officials. That really is a sad reflection of society in the United States.”
Khan said he wrote his letter with the hopes that it “would jolt members of the Council into realizing that orchestrating hostile meetings and firing up the crowd doesn’t really serve any purpose.” He has asked Days to investigate what happened at Tuesday’s meeting and to enforce measures so it does not happen again.
Today’s WaPo had an excellent article citing internal CDC data on the Delta variants and the threat this variant and others pose to our health. It is also interesting to note that Europe and the UK are doing far better containing the pandemic than we are at this point. This is the headline: “‘The war has changed’: Internal CDC document urges new messaging, warns delta infections likely more severe. The internal presentation shows that the agency thinks it is struggling to communicate on vaccine efficacy amid increased breakthrough infections”
The delta variant of the coronavirus appears to cause more severe illness than earlier variants and spreads as easily as chickenpox, according to an internal federal health document that argues officials must “acknowledge the war has changed.”
The document is an internal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention slide presentation, shared within the CDC and obtained by The Washington Post. It captures the struggle of the nation’s top public health agency to persuade the public to embrace vaccination and prevention measures, including mask-wearing, as cases surge across the United States and new research suggests vaccinated people can spread the virus.
The document strikes an urgent note, revealing the agency knows it must revamp its public messaging to emphasize vaccination as the best defense against a variant so contagious that it acts almost like a different novel virus, leaping from target to target more swiftly than Ebola or the common cold.
The article really is the must-read today. You can read about the CDC and its problems with communicating the situation. You can also read about the belief that the Delta Variant is likely to be more deadly which has not been widely communicated. The article emphasizes that Delta is as contagious as chickenpox.
There is more about this in today’s NYT: “C.D.C. Internal Report Calls Delta Variant as Contagious as Chickenpox. Infections in vaccinated Americans are rare, compared with those in unvaccinated people, the document said. But when they occur, vaccinated people may spread the virus just as easily.” So, we all need to mask up again.
The Delta variant is much more contagious, more likely to break through protections afforded by the vaccines and may cause more severe disease than all other known versions of the virus, according to an internal presentation circulated within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Dr. Rochelle P. Walensky, the director of the agency, acknowledged on Tuesday that vaccinated people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant carry just as much virus in the nose and throat as unvaccinated people, and may spread it just as readily, if less often.
But the internal document lays out a broader and even grimmer view of the variant.
The Delta variant is more transmissible than the viruses that cause MERS, SARS, Ebola, the common cold, the seasonal flu and smallpox, and it is as contagious as chickenpox, according to the document, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.
Many businesses want to remain open while protecting workers and others. Here are some other things you may want to read.
ABC News:
CDC mask decision followed stunning findings from Cape Cod beach outbreakAssociated Press:
Ravages of COVID surge evident inside Missouri hospitalCNN:
‘I am furious with myself’: Unvaccinated Covid patient describes the exhausting illnessMichael Paulson / New York Times:
Broadway Audiences Will Need Proof of Vaccination and Masks
I decided to basically still stay home and not go indoors anywhere unnecessary when I started seeing people pour into New Orleans for Independence Day. The clusterfuck of people driving cars with license plates from the surrounding plague rat states pretty much disturbed me to the point of it. I had thought that May and June’s forays to the hospital would likely be my last mask-wearing adventure. This week, I washed all my cloth masks and now will actually use the double-up method. They’ve started canceling events here. Frankly, I don’t know when I’ll feel like going into a restaurant, let alone a bar. I’m still trying to time my visits to the corner stores carefully and have committed myself to order groceries and get them delivered to the kitchen door. I’m glad I still can teach university online because there’s no intention here to mandate masking or vaccines at public universities. I still enjoy walking Temple maskless though. That’s my one big three times a day outing.
So, what are your plans? Granted, I live in Louisiana where the wipipo are basically plague rats and Petri dishes. I shudder at what I could bring up to Seattle and my family including my sister and her husband who have had various medical problems recently.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Monday Reads: Let’s get Cheeky!!!
Posted: July 26, 2021 Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: America the Bigot, Racism, Sexism, The Guardians 14 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
One of the problems that I’ve always had with sportsball is–even with strong unions– the owner/athlete paradigm is such a throwback to the relationship between the Roman Empire and all that slave jazz. The New Orleans Super Dome just got sold to Ceasar’s from Las Vegas, so now we have a new tacky thing to deal with while Golddigging Widow Gail Bensen gets to up her $4.3 billion net worth. I only wish that cities or teams could own their own franchise.
I’m not thrilled with the Olympics either, which usually is framed with similar relationships between the rules and the athletes. Also, there’s usually someone in charge of women’s wear that either hates women or is overly interested in their body parts. I’ve always been a big fan of Pink, but I’m even more a fan now for this action. This is from the UK Guardian: “Tokyo 2020: Pink offers to pay the fine for Norwegian women’s volleyball team. The ‘Get The Party Started’ singer said the European Handball Federation should be fined ‘for their sexism’”
Singer and songwriter Pink has offered to pay off the fine for the Norwegian women’s handball players who refused to wear bikini bottoms for their match against Spain at the European Beach Handball Championships last week.
The European Handball Federation (EHF) fined the team $1,765 (£1,283), or about $176 for each player, asserting that the women competed in “improper clothing” when they picked shorts rather than the mandated bikini bottoms.
Male players, meanwhile, are permitted to wear shorts no longer than four inches above the knee.
The 41-year-old music artist tweeted she was “proud” of the team for “protesting the very sexist rules about their ‘uniform’” and that the EHF “should be fined for their sexism.”
“Good on ya, ladies. I’ll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up,” she wrote.
Women athletes must wear bikini bottoms with a close fit and cut on an upward angle towards the top of the leg, according to the International Handball Federation’s rules. “The side width must be of a maximum of 10 centimetres,” the rules say.
Some of the worst people are having a fit about The Cleveland Indians being renamed The Cleveland Guardians. After all, isn’t it an American tradition to diminish the humanity and culture of Native Americans? If you can stand it, This is what the Trumperz said via The Hill. Oh, and the most disliked Senator ever–Ted Cruz– is at it too. This is a look at what the Deplorables of the country think about the name change.
Big Batty Gal by Elizabeth Prentis
The rules are always weird when it comes to women. Here’s the Daily Beast with this headline: “A Key Trump Witness Is Being Muzzled Over Her Custody Battle. Jennifer Weisselberg is the only person willing to speak publicly about Trump employees accepting untaxed corporate perks instead of salary. She’s been ordered to keep quiet.” I only wish they could gag order Trumperz.
As the New York criminal investigation into the Trump Organization deepens, a parallel battle is quietly playing out in the city’s family court, where lawyers are trying to muzzle one of the government’s key witnesses—and cast doubt over her mental health.
Jennifer Weisselberg, the ex-wife of Trump employee Barry Weisselberg—and former daughter-in-law of one of Trump’s closest business confidants, Allen Weisselberg—has told investigators that executives at the Trump Organization were rewarded with untaxed perks.
Her documents and grand jury testimony were crucial to last month’s indictment of her former father-in-law, the corporation’s chief financial officer. And she has repeatedly explained to journalists how the tuition for her children’s private school was an untaxed corporate gift paid in lieu of salary.
But all the while, she’s said these things at great personal risk; since March 19, Jennifer Weisselberg has been under a judge’s gag order to shut her up.
“Defendant, Jennifer Weisselberg, shall refrain from having any discussions or interviews whatsoever with the press about the parties’ children… the custody proceeding… or her motivation for giving interviews insofar as it concerns the children,” reads the order, signed by New York County Supreme Court Justice Lori S. Sattler.
But if she can’t talk to journalists about her children—or even her “motivation” for speaking to journalists—then she can’t explain to the public how the Trump Organization allegedly broke the law. And she’s the only person who witnessed these alleged crimes and is willing to speak publicly.
The gag order does not limit her from speaking to investigators. But three sources familiar with the divorce proceedings describe the gag order as part of a broader campaign of witness intimidation. Attorneys separately representing her ex-husband and children have repeatedly demanded court-mandated mental evaluations and drug tests for Jennifer Weisselberg. And these sources say these orders smear her character ahead of a potential criminal trial where she would be expected to testify against the company.
Bum 2 by MC Llamas
The rules are different for many of us. David French writes this for The Dispatch: “Structural Racism Isn’t Wokeness, It’s Reality. Christians must not deny the full consequences of centuries of intentional, racist harm.”
I’m not going to address the church’s procedural disputes. (Though I will note that it is contrary to basic principles of religious liberty to ask an arm of the state—a judge—to intervene in matters of church governance.) I am going to deal head-on with the prime underlying complaint that has triggered outrage and national media coverage of a struggle for control in one of America’s largest and most influential churches. The charge against Platt and his team can be summed up in one word: wokeness.
The congregants object to what they perceive as a pastoral embrace of critical race theory, and they assert that the Bible alone contains teaching sufficient to address America’s race problems. You can read the comprehensive complaint against Platt and his team here and the allegations of teaching or advocating CRT here.
Without restating all the contents of these lengthy documents, they include complaints that Platt and his MBC colleague pastor Mike Kelsey marched in a Christian black lives matter march and that Kelsey has endorsed the “CRT concepts” of “systemic racism” and “white privilege.” They also condemn Platt for this comment, which argues that the absence of overt prejudice doesn’t absolve one of the problems of racism and racialization:
A disparity exists. We can’t deny this. These are not opinions—they’re facts. It matters in our country whether one is white or black. Now, we don’t want it to matter, which is why I think we try to convince ourselves it doesn’t matter. We think to ourselves, “I don’t hold prejudices toward black or white people, so racism is not my problem.” But this is where we need to see that racialization is our problem. It’s all of our problem. We subtly, almost unknowingly, contribute to it.
The dissenters argue that the “solution to the ‘race’ problem in America is more Bible, not more sociology books. It is not the Bible plus a secular reading list, but sola scriptura.” It’s not just unwise to rely on secular scholarship to address American racism, they argue: It’s unbiblical.
This argument echoes tenets of the secular right-wing consensus on race—that racism exists only when there is individual malign intent, that remedies for racism should be limited to imposing consequences on individual racists, and that there is no intergenerational obligation to remedy historic injustice (“I’m not responsible for my ancestors’ sins”).
Under this mode of thinking, the concept of “equality under the law”—as mandated by the Constitution and the Civil Rights Act—is both necessary and largely sufficient to address the causes and consequences of centuries of slavery followed by generations of Jim Crow.
But on the core issues of American racism, Platt is biblically and historically right, and it’s his detractors who are biblically and historically wrong. These “conservatives” have placed a secular political frame around an issue with profound religious significance. They’ve thus not just abandoned the whole counsel of scripture, they’ve even contradicted a core component of the secular conservatism they claim to uphold.
Venue Insomnia by Xu Yang
Somehow it’s okay for children of color to experience racism, but it’s wrong for children of certain wipipo to learn about it. Seriously, what’s that all about? Here’s John Oliver explaining redlining and gerrymandering in his usual adroit way via the AV club.
The recent Republican push toward state-mandated literal whitewashing of American history to remove all that pesky racism and genocide has seen a lot of not-willfully-ignorant people stepping up to the historical plate. On Sunday, it was John Oliver’s turn at bat. His extra-long Last Week Tonight return from hiatus saw the reliably funny, research-supplied, and pissed-off Brit doing an especially comprehensive job of examining yet another area where white Americans’ perceptions of their history (and the inarguable and deeply inconvenient facts thereof) are skewed, predictably, in favor of said white people’s self-satisfied need to do nothing.
In his piece on housing discrimination, Oliver, as is his way, plucked out one representative case from which to expand his argument that the institutionalized bigotry in home ownership continues to undermine the potential of Black prosperity. In this case, Oliver’s pick of a depressingly voluminous litter came from Bruce’s Beach in Manhattan, California. That’s where a black couple’s valuable beachfront property was seized by the now-wealthy town, but only after even the most strenuous efforts of the local Ku Klux Klan failed to terrorize Willa and Charles Bruce from their legal residence. As Oliver put it in summarizing the way that the actions of government and cross-burning yahoos’ to disenfranchise Black Americans have always gone hand in soot-covered glove, “Sure, the vigilante racists are spooky, but you’ve really gotta worry when the motherfuckers with advanced degrees show up.”
Just to channel his most skeptical (and whitest) viewers for a moment, Oliver asked what’s to be done about this generations-old racist swindle, anyway? After all, didn’t Manhattan put up a nice plaque about how it stole a Black family’s land and put out a proclamation condemning the act but pointedly not apologizing? What more do the millions of Black Americans legally denied their chance top own property and accumulate wealth at the same rate as their white co-citizens want? (Psst, it rhymes with “steparations,” and Oliver asked his more historically clued in viewers to keep the answer under their hats until his wrap-up.)
So, thank you for coming to my Ted Rant on why we keep having to deal with this shit.
You may view more art and the ones I’ve posted today from The Guardian‘s: “The cheek of it: artists celebrate the bottom – in pictures.”
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads: A tale of Plague Rats and Variant Human Petri Dishes
Posted: July 23, 2021 Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: anti-vaccination movement, maks mandates 22 Comments
NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – JULY 14: Visitors walk past face mask signs along Decatur Street in the French Quarter on July 14, 2020, in New Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
Good Day Sky Dancers!
Many U.S. cities have returned to mask mandates for any inside activity. New Orleans Returned to a mandate on Wednesday as part of an order handed down by Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards. Newsweek reports that we’re not alone.
In a statement, New Orleans Health Department Director Dr. Jennifer Avegno cited the city’s “inadequate vaccination rate,” when announcing the mask advisory.
“People who continue to refuse to take the lifesaving COVID vaccine are now also putting the entire community in jeopardy. We must take action now to slow the rapid spread of the Delta variant,” Avegno said.
While some areas of the U.S. have reinstated their mask mandate, Hawaii Governor David Ige recently announced he was keeping a requirement in place to mandate masks when residents are indoors. According to the Associated Press, Ige said he plans to keep the state’s mask mandate in place until at least 70 percent of the population is vaccinated.
A man wearing a mask walks along Washington Street in Greenbay, Wisconsin, in March 2021
Inadequate vaccination rates appear to be the national shame. Returning to masks may help some, but it’s not the panacea for the pandemic. Getting vaccinated is the only way to go. However, vaccine hesitancy is everywhere, albeit worse in the Trump states. You can see the list of states without mask mandate at this US News & World Report link. You’ll notice the worst states for Delta Variant cases–including Missouri, Florida, and Texas–are on that list. The previous article from Newsweek reported that St Louis was considering a return. Undoubtedly, Kansas City will also comply. However, the huge numbers of rural states and counties where masks and the vaccine are anathemas continue to plague the country. I literally know understand what that saying truly means.
Kansas counties that had a mask mandate had a 50% reduction in the spread of COVID-19 when compared to those without, a KU study found. Masks don’t eliminate the disease, but they slow virus spread.
Governor Ivey of Alabama had this to say, and she’s right: “‘It’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated’: Gov. Ivey on rising in COVID-19 cases, low vaccination rate.”
On Thursday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey addressed concerns about the recent rise in COVID-19 cases in the state and its low vaccination rate.
In the last two weeks, the state has seen over 9,900 cases of COVID-19. In Jefferson County alone, over 1,000 new cases have been reported.
Health officials and the governor herself site the low vaccination rate as a major hurdle in trying to combat the virus and the new, highly contagious Delta variant.
New Hampshire’s Durham Town remains under a mask mandate as the Town’s administrator Todd Sellig reminds them in the town newspaper.
Newsweek reports that “Zero States Have Decreasing COVID Cases as Delta Variant Spreads.”
Zero U.S. states have reported a decrease in daily COVID-19 cases over the past week as the Delta variant continues to spread.
According to data from Johns Hopkins University, over the past week, 49 states, as well as Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico, have seen an increase in daily COVID-19 cases of 5 percent or more.
On Wednesday, the states that saw the highest number of new daily COVID-19 cases were Texas, which reported over 8,100 new cases; California (over 7,700 cases); Louisiana (over 5,300); Missouri (over 2,900); and Georgia (over 2,200).In addition to those five states, 21 other states reported over 500 new cases on Wednesday, including eight that reported over 1,000 new cases.
The data does not include newly reported cases in Florida and Michigan, but according to a tracker from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), both have seen an increase in new daily cases over the past week. CDC data shows that in Michigan, cases increased by over 1,000 over the past week while Florida saw an additional 20,000 cases when compared to the previous week.
According to the data, Colorado is the only state to see no change in the number of new daily cases reported, but that does not indicate a decrease in daily cases
People walk through the 626 Night Market at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia on July 9.(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times). LA now has returned to a mask mandate.
David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad Philbrick–of the New York Times--start the discussion on Vaccine Mandates: “Boosting Vaccinations; Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also a way to save lives.”
Vaccine mandates are controversial. They’re also effective.
Before Houston Methodist became one of the first hospital systems in the U.S. to mandate Covid-19 vaccines, about 85 percent of its employees were vaccinated. After the mandate, the share rose to about 98 percent, with the remaining 2 percent receiving exemptions for medical or religious reasons, Bloomberg’s Carey Goldberg reported. Only about 0.6 percent of employees quit or were fired.
Schools — including Indiana University and many private colleges — that require students and workers to get vaccinated have reported extremely high uptake.
A recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey of Americans who had been opposed to getting vaccinated and later changed their minds found that mandates — or restrictions on the unvaccinated — were one common reason. One 51-year-old man told Kaiser that he began to feel as if he had “limited options without it.”
The French government will soon require that people show proof of vaccination or a recent negative test to eat at a restaurant, attend a movie or participate in many other activities. After President Emmanuel Macron announced the policy last week, the number of vaccine appointments surged. Italy announced a similar policy yesterday, The Times’s Marc Santora explains.
People on Newbury Street in the Boston MA area still wearing maks despite the lifting of outdoors masking requirements around Memorial day.
This is from David Frum writing at The Atlantic: “Vaccinated America Has Had Enough. In the United States, this pandemic could be almost over by now. The reasons it’s still going are pretty clear.
In the United States, this pandemic could’ve been over by now, and certainly would’ve been by Labor Day. If the pace of vaccination through the summer had been anything like the pace in April and May, the country would be nearing herd immunity. With most adults immunized, new and more infectious coronavirus variants would have nowhere to spread. Life could return nearly to normal.
Experts list many reasons for the vaccine slump, but one big reason stands out: vaccine resistance among conservative, evangelical, and rural Americans. Pro-Trump America has decided that vaccine refusal is a statement of identity and a test of loyalty.
…
Reading about the fates of people who refused the vaccine is sorrowful. But as summer camp and travel plans are disrupted—as local authorities reimpose mask mandates that could have been laid aside forever—many in the vaccinated majority must be thinking: Yes, I’m very sorry that so many of the unvaccinated are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions. I’m also very sorry that the responsible rest of us are suffering the consequences of their bad decisions.
As cases uptick again, as people who have done the right thing face the consequences of other people doing the wrong thing, the question occurs: Does Biden’s America have a breaking point? Biden’s America produces 70 percent of the country’s wealth—and then sees that wealth transferred to support Trump’s America. Which is fine; that’s what citizens of one nation do for one another. Something else they do for one another: take rational health-care precautions during a pandemic. That reciprocal part of the bargain is not being upheld.
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/pmn/DOEM5CGN6JHNBE246CQS4WW5WY.jpg)
Server Jeni Cero (left) brings food to Siani Davis (center) and her boyfriend, Troy Richardson, during lunchtime at Green Eggs Cafe in South Philadelphia. The city is dropping coronavirus restrictions, but the mask mandate will remain in placeTIM TAI / Staff Photographer.
Frum also brings up the idea of vaccine mandates.
Can governments lawfully require more public-health cooperation from their populations? They regularly do, for other causes. More than a dozen conservative states have legislated drug testing for people who seek cash welfare. It is bizarre that Florida and other states would put such an onus on the poorest people in society—while allowing other people to impose a much more intimate and immediate harm on everybody else. The federal government could use its regulatory and spending powers to encourage vaccination in the same way that Ron DeSantis has used his executive powers to discourage it. The Biden administration could require proof of vaccination to fly or to travel by interstate train or bus. It could mandate that federal contractors demonstrate that their workforces are vaccinated. It could condition federal student loans on proof of vaccination. Those measures might or might not be wise policy: Inducements are usually more effective at changing individual behavior than penalties are. But they would be feasible and legal—and they would spread the message about what people ought to do, in the same way that sanctions against drunk driving, cheating on taxes, and unjust discrimination in the workplace do.
Read more at the link.
While the jerk that is the governor of Georgia has declared that no city or county can mandate mask-wearing, two huge businesses have taken umbrage and going out on their own. This is really interesting and from the Atlantic Journal/Constitution: “The Jolt: Customer requirements by Walmart, Kroger make mask mandates a property rights issue” This might be the way that some businesses start to do business.
Late Wednesday, for the first time, Gov. Brian Kemp issued an executive order that explicitly prohibited cities and counties from mandating the use of masks, triggering a furious reaction from local government officials who accused the Republican of placing his political interests above their efforts to protect residents from a growing pandemic.
The governor has said he believes requiring masks are a “bridge too far” and that such a mandate is unenforceable – even though Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey crossed that bridge on Wednesday. A mask mandate was essential to “slow the spread and turn these trends in a different direction,” she said.
The Alabama governor was actually behind Walmart, which hours earlier had announced its decision to mandate face coverings before customers can enter. From the Washington Post:
Walmart’s decision to require masks — with its potential to alienate the company’s clientele in red states and rural areas — echoed its choice last year to end the sale of ammunition following a mass shooting at its store in El Paso.
The Arkansas-based retailer announced the mandate in a Wednesday news release, citing the recent resurgence in U.S. covid-19 cases and the need for consistency across its operations. Walmart said roughly 3,500 of its more than 5,300 namesake stores and Sam’s Club locations already comply with public health mandates in their respective markets.
“We know some people have differing opinions on this topic,” according to the news release from Dacona Smith and Lance de la Rosa, the chief operating officers of Walmart and Sam’s Club, respectively. “We also recognize the role we can play to help protect the health and well-being of the communities we serve by following the evolving guidance of health officials like the CDC.”
Worth noting is the fact that Walmart has estimated that 10% of its workforce is on some sort of coronavirus leave. Also Wednesday:
It still enrages me that a public health issue of monumental consequence has turned into a political culture war with so much disinformation that folks that might normally seek a vaccine are hesitant or hell-bent against it.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Remember, these threads are always open, so even though I went down the Covid-19 rabbit hole today, you don’t have to! I really want to go to Seattle to see my granddaughters and daughter, but the thought of what I might bring to them because of having to go through airports and be around these vaccineless and maskless nitwits just makes me sit home and think that’s the safest option for everyone concerned.
Monday Reads: Dystopian SyFy and the Trump Legacy
Posted: July 19, 2021 Filed under: Mid Day Reads | Tags: #TrumpCult 21 Comments
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m having a tough time getting started today on things. BB and I’ve been talking about the weirdish dreams I’ve been having the last few years with a fairly constant theme although changing setting. Now, I read just about every dystopian science fiction novel as a kid that I could get my hands on. And, that habit has pretty much continued up to the onset of my social security years. But, why is it just recently that I keep thinking my home is located somewhere in a mall of some kind from which I never go outside? It’s filled with even stranger people.
Part of it might be due to the invasion of the hipster gentrifiers in my neighborhood coupled with a decaying abandoned Navy Base that was key to get sailors to both World War 1 and 2 theatres. It’s now filled with a ton of the region’s opioid-addicted who live off rag-picking trash cans and scrapping metal wherever they can get it. It’s also next to a detail shop turned hipster hangout bar where tourists come for something that doesn’t resemble a New Orleans experience at all. So, it’s a one-stop drug, and booze yourself into oblivion gateway. It seems to be a popular place to film porn these days too. Folks come all the way from Atlanta to do that.
Then there are those addicts that commit crimes like petty theft or burglary or busting into homes that appear to be abandoned to set up camp. All of that is really dystopian, believe me. Plus, the weather keeps getting looking more climate-impaired all the time. Plus, I let a friend escape a violent marriage who has been here for over 6 years and came with a drug problem, PTSD, and severe brain damage. She now calls me a “vaccine bully” as I struggle to reason with her about why she needs to get the Fauci Ouchi while telling me that it might change my DNA so fully I could become a zombie. No, she’s not a Trumper, but it frequently sounds like she could be.
I still think there’s something about the Trumpist regime and its cult that really tripped these dreams into me, although I have no dear leader in any of them. Just simply, people living in airports or shopping malls, or other semi-functional artifices of the 20th century. I’ve had doozies of them the last two nights.
So, when I read this headline in Salon, I thought, well, maybe it’s not just my anxiety running away with my sleep. From Salon: “Dr. John Gartner on America after Trump: “Dystopian science fiction … is actually happening”. Former Johns Hopkins professor on the aftermath of Trump’s coup — and whether he was a Russian stooge after all.”
If Trump had successfully ordered the United States military to keep him in power by usurping the will of the American people, the result could well have been a second American Civil War. The nation was saved from such an outcome, at least for the moment, through good fortune and the choices of a few real patriots such as Gen. Milley and his allies.
Unfortunately, Trumpism was not routed or finally defeated, and the Trump coup is ongoing. Trump remains in firm control of the Republican Party. At least 30 percent of the American people have been seduced by the Big Lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump and that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president.
The Jim Crow Republicans are escalating their war on multiracial democracy by proposing laws in numerous states designed to stop Black and brown people and others who support the Democratic Party from voting. The end goal of this anti-democratic campaign is to turn the United States into a plutocratic theocratic fascist state where dissent is not allowed and the Trump-Republican Party rules uncontested.
In a recent interview on MSNBC, historian Timothy Snyder, author of the bestselling book “On Tyranny,” described this state of peril: “A failed coup is practice for a successful coup. … We’re now working within the framework of a Big Lie … so long as we’re in that framework of a Big Lie, we can expect one of the parties to try to rig the system.”
Like other fascist and fake populist movements, Trumpism draws its power and a type of life force from the slavish loyalty of Trump’s followers. Normal politics is fundamentally ill-equipped to grapple with fascism and its commands to ignore reality in deference to the Great Leader, the elevation of that leader into a type of God and extension of the self, and its collective celebration of narcissism and other anti-social behavior including violence and hatred. Ultimately, Trumpism is a cult movement: If Trump and other leaders are the brain and the arms, Trump’s followers serve as a hammer meant to smash multiracial democracy.
From The Daily Beast and Molly Jung-Fast: “As a twice-impeached, one-term historical freak show of a president, his only hope is to turn his movement into a cult, worshipping himself. It’s the Trump Steaks of religion.”
Seriously, literally, this is a cult.
Donald Trump, who regrets not ordering the White House flag to be flown at half-staff to mourn Ashli Babbitt, the rioter and Qanon believer killed while storming the U.S. Capitol, is determined to create a narrative that his idiot insurrectionists are in fact part of an army of holy MAGA warriors.
“I would venture to say it was the largest crowd I had ever spoken before… It was a loving crowd too, by the way. Many, many people have told me that was a loving crowd. It was too bad, it was too bad that they did that” Trump said in one of his post-presidency interviews from Mar-a-Lago. He didn’t mention the violence, but insisted that, “In all fairness, the Capitol Police were ushering people in… They were hugging and kissing. You don’t see that. There’s plenty of tape of that.”
You don’t see that tape because that didn’t happen, but that’s the point of this cult: Never mind your lying eyes, have faith in your Dear Orange Leader.
“Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted,” he concluded, meaning to overturn the results of the election because he’d said there was fraud and never mind all of the judges appointed by Republicans and Republican state and election officials who said there was no evidence of any of that. Heretics. The GOP is dead, and there’s only the MAGA movement now, as the party’s “leaders” sojourn to his sacred golf clubs to confess their sins.
I know a lot of this has its roots in the absolute abandonment of reason to the politicization of white American evangelicism to the point you hardly recognize the “christ” in their “Christianity.” Grifters of a feather flock together. This is also from Salon: “How evangelicals abandoned Christianity — and became “conservatives” instead. As an evangelical pastor for many years, I saw faith in Jesus Christ gradually replaced by right-wing ideology. I watched this happen when Pat Robertson brought his presidential campaign to small Iowa towns. Since then, the Republican party has never been the same, although it’s been on the road to reinstating Jim Crow since Nixon’s Southern Strategy. It was logical they’d follow along. This is written by Nathaniel Manderson, who is no stranger to that Journey.
Over the last 70 years, Christian theology has been steadily replaced, within the evangelical world, by Republican or “conservative” ideology. I noticed this in my time at an evangelical seminary and during my years in ministry, whenever political discussion would go beyond abortion and gay rights. When the conversation turned towards gun rights, immigration, taxing the wealthy, education or health care, the tenets of Christian theology disappeared behind Republican talking points.
The evangelical political message was that the Bible should be used in politics to attack certain people, but never to question oneself. That’s how you get people to donate: Make the enemy clearly visible and easily definable. That’s why the Bible is almost never used in politics as a justification for serving the poor, welcoming the foreigner, healing the sick or promoting equality. That agenda is not likely to motivate donations from wealthy white heterosexual men. Therefore, over time the evangelical message became that “American” and “Republican” were more important labels than “Christian” — or that they were effectively the same thing.
They may have loved Dubya–who they recognized as part of the flock–, but they worship Trump as the one that will do anything for ultimate power, attention, and money. He has fully embraced the right-wing culture wars, so the sheeple just found their shepherd no matter his behavior or demeanor or outward displays of mean exclusivity.
Plus, the DOJ under Merrick Garland continues to disappoint.
This is getting ridiculous.
So, anyway, I’m watching a few other stories, but it really seems like there’s a lot of inaction on some pretty important things right now. But then, it’s summer, and everyone is out spreading Covid-19 again. Stay safe! The variants are stewing and brewing and out there!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Top Generals suspected Trump was plotting a coup
Posted: July 15, 2021 Filed under: 2020 Elections, morning reads, The Big Lie 7 Comments
Honoré Daumier, “The Uprising,” 1848 or later
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I’m doing today’s post. BB’s in bed healing atm so I’m going to scramble to get stuff up before I see students at noon.
The details coming out from General Mark Milley in the latest tell-all book from two Pulitzer Prize-winning WAPO reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker are simply horrifying. This is from CNN: “‘They’re not going to f**king succeed’: Top generals feared Trump would attempt a coup after election, according to new book”
The top US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley, was so shaken that then-President Donald Trump and his allies might attempt a coup or take other dangerous or illegal measures after the November election that Milley and other top officials informally planned for different ways to stop Trump, according to excerpts of an upcoming book obtained by CNN.
The book, from Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post reporters Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, describes how Milley and the other Joint Chiefs discussed a plan to resign, one-by-one, rather than carry out orders from Trump that they considered to be illegal, dangerous or ill-advised.
“It was a kind of Saturday Night Massacre in reverse,” Leonnig and Rucker write.
The book, “I Alone Can Fix It,” scheduled to be released next Tuesday, chronicles Trump’s final year as president, with a behind-the-scenes look at how senior administration officials and Trump’s inner circle navigated his increasingly unhinged behavior after losing the 2020 election. The authors interviewed Trump for more than two hours.
The book recounts how for the first time in modern US history the nation’s top military officer, whose role is to advise the president, was preparing for a showdown with the commander in chief because he feared a coup attempt after Trump lost the November election.
The authors explain Milley’s growing concerns that personnel moves that put Trump acolytes in positions of power at the Pentagon after the November 2020 election, including the firing of Defense Secretary Mark Esper and the resignation of Attorney General William Barr, were the sign of something sinister to come.
Milley spoke to friends, lawmakers and colleagues about the threat of a coup, and the Joint Chiefs chairman felt he had to be “on guard” for what might come.
“They may try, but they’re not going to f**king succeed,” Milley told his deputies, according to the authors. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with the guns.”
In the days leading up to January 6, Leonnig and Rucker write, Milley was worried about Trump’s call to action. “Milley told his staff that he believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.”
Milley viewed Trump as “the classic authoritarian leader with nothing to lose,” the authors write, and he saw parallels between Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric as a victim and savior and Trump’s false claims of election fraud.
“This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides, according to the book. “The gospel of the Führer.”
Francisco Goya, “The Third of May,” 1808
Ben Jacobs–writing for New York Magazine–had more to say about the Hitler referrences. “Top U.S. General Said Trump Preached ‘Gospel of the Führer’.
Tump had appointed Milley to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs in 2018, over the objections of Defense Secretary James Mattis. The Army general’s tenure at the top of the Pentagon had been relatively quiet, until last summer, when he appeared in uniform during an infamous photo opportunity for Trump in Lafayette Square that followed the clearing of protesters in front of the White House. Milley later apologized for creating a “perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
Although the book chronicles Milley’s concern with Trump dating back to that moment, the general’s worries grew rapidly as the president plunged the nation into chaos following Election Day. Seven days later, Milley got a call from “an old friend” with an explicit warning that Trump and his allies were trying to “overturn the government.” Milley was confident that any attempts by Trump to hold on to power would be thwarted, because the military wouldn’t go along. “They may try, but they’re not going to fucking succeed,” he told aides. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the CIA and the FBI. We’re the guys with guns.”
Still, Milley was disturbed by the sight of Trump supporters rallying to his cause in November, calling them “Brownshirts in the streets.” Leonnig and Rucker wrote that Milley “believed Trump was stoking unrest, possibly in hopes of an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act and call out the military.” The general likened the U.S. to Germany’s fragile Weimar Republic in the early 1930s. “This is a Reichstag moment,” he said, referring to the arson attack on Germany’s Parliament that Hitler used as a pretext to assume absolute power and destroy democracy.
On January 6, Milley watched with disgust as Trump addressed his supporters. Soon after Trump finished speaking, a violent mob of his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to disrupt the certification of the presidential election by a joint session of Congress — and many promised to return for Biden’s inauguration. “These guys are Nazis, they’re boogaloo boys, they’re Proud Boys. These are the same people we fought in World War II,” Milley said a week after the attack on the Capitol.
After Biden took the oath of office on January 20, and Trump was finally an ex-president, former First Lady Michelle Obama encountered Milley at the Capitol and asked how he was feeling. “No one has a bigger smile today than I do,” he said. “You can’t see it under my mask but I do.”
Konstantin Yuon, “New Planet,” 1921
Meanwhile out in the states, the Big Lie continues to be a Republican Election tactic. This is from the Atlantic Journal-Constituion: “Georgia Republicans center campaigns on false claims of election fraud.” These people are a crazy-ass Death Cult.
The organizers at the door handed out soft-pink “Trump Won” signs to each attendee. An out-of-state radio host spouted far-right conspiracies. Speaker after speaker insisted that Joe Biden couldn’t have won the November election and that Georgia couldn’t be a blue state.
The gathering this week in Rome might seem like a pro-Donald Trump fantasy convention. But this was no fringe group. Some of the biggest stars in the Georgia GOP were in attendance.
State Sen. Burt Jones, a wealthy executive who is expected to run for lieutenant governor, was given a hero’s welcome. A fellow Republican, state Sen. Brandon Beach, regaled the group with stories about standing up to the party establishment. Two other congressional candidates worked the room.
And U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene opened by telling the crowd, “I do not think Joe Biden won the election.”
Across the state, candidates for public office are repeating Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and the contest was stolen from him. Many are running for local office and state legislative seats, while some are seeking the most powerful posts in the state.
Diego Rivera, “The Arsenal,” 1928
Where does the exercise of freespeech trip over into inciting insurrection? Hey DOJ! Hey AG Garland! Can we get some action here before there’s a repeat of Jan in–say–August? Or say, let’s get back to the Bender book. (See BB’s post on this) and discuss the former guy doing that interview for it. This is from Poliltico: “Trump rages over post-presidential books he did interviews for. The avalanche of coming books has caused recriminations. And there is anxiety about what’s to come by Meredith McGraw.
The guessing game that Bender’s book sparked added to the schisms and points of tensions that have erupted in Trump’s orbit in recent weeks. As the deluge of Trump-related books has hit the shelves, the already tenuous alliances that bind aides and associates of the former president have been strained further. Ex-aides have publicly attacked one-time allies while others have sought distance from a presidency they once dutifully served.
Fear is mounting, too, about the tea-spilling to come. In particular, Trump officials are anxiously awaiting the books set to be published by actual colleagues, chief among them counselor to the president Kellyanne Conway and Jared Kushner, who plan to write their own accounts of the Trump presidency.
“I think it’s fraught right now as to who is telling the truth,” said a Trump adviser. “They’re all trying to go back in time and curate their own images.”
Privately, former administration officials and top campaign aides have shared concerns about Conway’s upcoming tell-all in particular. The ex-president’s loyal former counselor is expected to give a hold-no-punches account of her time in the White House and those she worked alongside. Conway herself sat down with Trump for her book at Mar-a-Lago.
Right! Just what we need! A book from Ms “Alternative Facts”. Well, here’s another attention grabber. From The Guardian.
https://twitter.com/dansabbagh/status/1415612547781300224
Vladimir Putin personally authorised a secret spy agency operation to support a “mentally unstable” Donald Trump in the 2016 US presidential election during a closed session of Russia’s national security council, according to what are assessed to be leaked Kremlin documents.
The key meeting took place on 22 January 2016, the papers suggest, with the Russian president, his spy chiefs and senior ministers all present.
They agreed a Trump White House would help secure Moscow’s strategic objectives, among them “social turmoil” in the US and a weakening of the American president’s negotiating position.
Russia’s three spy agencies were ordered to find practical ways to support Trump, in a decree appearing to bear Putin’s signature.
By this point Trump was the frontrunner in the Republican party’s nomination race. A report prepared by Putin’s expert department recommended Moscow use “all possible force” to ensure a Trump victory.
Western intelligence agencies are understood to have been aware of the documents for some months and to have carefully examined them. The papers, seen by the Guardian, seem to represent a serious and highly unusual leak from within the Kremlin.
The Guardian has shown the documents to independent experts who say they appear to be genuine. Incidental details come across as accurate. The overall tone and
The Revolution, 1937 by Marc Chagall
AG Garland? Hello? Are you there? Please rid us of this meddlesome TV Reality Bimbo. You know? The Former Guy?
So, that’s enough to discuss and read for awhile. I think we’re likely in for a Friday surprise tomorrow. There are hints from Politico: ” Pigs fly: McConnell weighs giving Biden a bipartisan win. The self-appointed Senate GOP “Grim Reaper” has aired remarkably little criticism of the physical infrastructure deal that his members helped negotiate.” I personally will believe it when I see it.
Something strange is happening in Washington: Mitch McConnell might go along with a central piece of Joe Biden’s agenda.
The self-appointed “Grim Reaper” of the Senate, a minority leader who said just two months ago that “100% of my focus is on standing up to this administration,” has been remarkably circumspect about the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure deal. He’s privately telling his members to separate that effort from Democrats’ party-line $3.5 trillion spending plan and publicly observed there’s a “decent” chance for its success.
So, lots of headines to share today! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments