Tag Archives: covid-19

But since I’m too tired for a deeper post, I’ll pluck it.

Football coach Jon Gruden was recently fired for his many sexist, homophobic emails. Erick Erickson protests that lots of people talk like that so what’s the big deal?

Lying anti-Semite Rick Wiles claims he only opposes Zionism, not Jews. Of course, he also says “Merrick Garland is a Jew. That’s why they’re taking over school boards.” Like I said, he’s a liar.

David Barton says only people who pretend to be Christians supported slavery. His son ain’t much better.

Trump says if the GOP doesn’t stop Democrats from cheating in 2022 and 2024, Republican voters should stay home. For once I hope they listen to him.

“Michael Gableman, the former judge leading the review, admitted days later that he does not have “a comprehensive understanding or even any understanding of how elections work.”  — a look at another fake audit of elections, this time in Wisconsin.

Will the GOP make the logical leap from “covid vaccine mandates are bad” to “no vaccine mandates for anything?”

Ohio Republican Josh Mandel complains about vax mandates at a school board meeting, and it’s not even his school district.

Texas’ child welfare agency yanked its LGBTQ resources page after a Republican complained.

A school official warns parents that the state could crack down on them if they give kids anti-Holocaust books without pro-Holocaust material for “balance.”

Rep. Claudia Tenney has spent $100,000 of campaign money on her own companies.

Cyber Ninjas in Arizona didn’t find the fantasized massive proof of fraud. So of course Mike “MyPillow” Lindell says they’re part of the cover-up. Meanwhile, North Carolina’s Republicans want to search voting machines in Durham, one of the bluest parts of the state.

Contemptible as I find Republicans equating vaccine mandates with the Holocaust, it’s not a new shtick with right-wingers — I’d forgotten Sarah Palin referred to criticism of her “gunsight” ads as blood libel.

Here’s OAN host Dan Ball explaining not only are vaccine mandates turning us into Nazi Germany, vaccines have killed thousands of people. Which is what is known as a lie.

Michelle Bachman, former Congressional representative and permanent bullshit artist claims that firing people who won’t get vaccinated is no better than murder.

A judge in Tennessee had some black elementary school kids carted to jail in handcuffs. Their crime? Well they watched a schoolyard fight and the judge decided that could qualify as a crime, so …

A Tallahassee police chief says as a Christian, he can proselytize to his employees. Which is a)not legal and b)it would be front page news if a Muslim said that.

Michael Flynn tries to convince his fellow QAnon supporters that he hasn’t switched sides to Satan.

Right-winger Charlie Kirk claims we Democrats want Americans living in sexual anarchy.

It’s always projection with the right-wing. They think we’re out to brainwash their children because that’s what they want to do.

How did the far-right Trump Won The Election OAN “news” network come to be? According to Reuters, AT&T saw money in adding another right-wing network to their U-verse Internet TV options, from which OAN migrated to DirectTV (that part is complicated).

For me the money shot of the story is a former OAN employee defending them on the grounds nobody else is doing stories like these or catering to viewers who share the network’s worldview. In other words, if there are viewers who want to be told lies about how Trump won, catering to them is no different than making a romance or SF series because there’s a market for it. And of course, OAN is creating that market for bullshit by reassuring its viewers they’re right.

Not that OAN’s the only lying liar: Sen. Ron Johnson claims there is no FDA-approved vaccine in America. And right-wingers constantly lie about how the older, higher tax rates didn’t take more money from the rich because of all the loopholes.

As I mentioned in a previous post right-wingers have been waging an astroturf campaign against mask mandates for a while. But for all their “my body my choice” bullshit some of them are increasingly unhinged with anyone who disagrees with them, saying kids wearing masks is “rape” and “abuse.” Or we have this guy’s plans for National Walk Your Child To School Day: “They think it’s gonna be a fun and safe photo opportunity with parents and kids,” David Hakimfar, a West Hollywood attorney and anti-vaccine activist said at the protest Tuesday. “Let’s show up here and show them it’s not. Let’s show them how we really feel. Let’s make them afraid.” Some people are already afraid with good reason. And the same for healthcare workers.

Not that this kind of reaction is unusual when privilege gets challenged Cops like to pose as heroes, but if they’re asked to help the wrong people …

Or consider Janet McEachin, Idaho’s lieutenant governor, who keeps trying to seize power whenever the governor’s out of state. Or the head of CyberNinjas who’s refusing to participate in a Congressional hearing. Hell, if I’d made several million dollars for a bullshit audit like his, I doubt I’d want to discuss it either.

How about Republicans who say they were horrified Biden abandoned our Afghani allies — but don’t like Afghani refugees living here.

Not that it’s all Republicans Millions of lawyers are supposed to get their student loans forgiven for entering public service. Not how it works in practice.

To end on some good news:

Biden has reversed the Trump rule that family planning clinics getting federal funds cannot recommend clients to abortion services. And a federal judge has temporarily blocked Texas’ “anyone can sue an abortionist” law

A 1/6 rioter broke down in tears at his sentencing. I’m sure it’s because he never expected to face consequences, but I relish his tears. A Texas man gets 15 months for the covid-licking hoax.

The WaPo discusses the grim statistics.

Washington state has managed its Trump Virus cases. It’s also accepting Idaho cases that state’s system is too overloaded to handle. Idaho Governor “Typhoid Brad” Little (I’m going to be using Typhoid Republican nicknames a lot for a while) is still adamant against any sort of mandates — he’s just going to wait for residents to do the right thing. Which worked out badly for one Alabama man. And the people are ending up in hospital from ivermectin poisoning. And the many people being forced to postpone surgeries.

LGM points out there are “huge numbers of basically apolitical or weakly political people who aren’t right wing zealots, but who are right wing adjacent in some way — they live in social/cultural bubbles where the Republican puke funnel is taken to be news rather than propaganda, and therefore it’s easy for them to just sort of slide into genuine vaccine “hesitancy” in the literal sense of the word. If not for the right-wing media, they might be okay. Instead, for some people, getting the vaccine feels like breaking with your community.

Which makes sense, when we have Republicans are telling them vaccines mandates are fascism. Or Erick Erickson, right-wing ass-hat, claiming it’s all a plot to whip up hate for unvaccinated Republicans. Or that Christian conservatives are incorporating vaccine and mask opposition into their Christianity (one anti-vax pastor also thinks math is nonsense).

We’ve always had vaccine mandates in America. One worry is that while Republicans are focused on covid, it won’t stop there. After all, right-wing anti-vaxxing goes back before Trump, and not just on the fringes. Of course, when President Obama said vaccines were good, a lot of Republicans denounced them. Tucker Carlson says the goal of mandatory military vaccination “is to identify the sincere Christians in the ranks, the free thinkers, the men with high testosterone levels, and anyone else who doesn’t love Joe Biden and make them leave immediately.” Breitbart claims that liberals are aggressively pro-vaccine and mocking anti-vaxxers because they want right-wingers to reject it and die … hmm, maybe taking it would be the ultimate way to own the libs?

It says a lot about the right that that’s the best rationale Breitbart can offer. As Roy Edroso points out, it’s bullshit (conservatives had to refuse the vaccine before they got mocked) — and he’s probably right it’s less about encouraging vaccination than giving readers a new reason to hate liberals.

Though it’s not just politics that’s the problem — a lot of online wellness influencers are anti-vax.

It’s hell on the medical personnel dealing with this: “I’m fatigued because I’m working more than ever, but more people don’t have to die,” Erickson told Medscape Medical News. “It’s been very hard physically, mentally, emotionally.” It’s certainly a good thing that at least one doctor spewing misinformation has lost his license.

LGM sums up the Republican position: “People should be free to acquire and transmit to others a deadly and extremely communicable virus, that is causing a catastrophic pandemic, even though this catastrophe could be avoided completely if people chose to take a free and safe vaccine. Furthermore, it’s morally wrong for the government to engage in even the mildest coercion to nudge people toward getting vaccinated, because such coercion interferes with individual liberty, which is always the highest social value in every circumstance.”

Likewise,  “That Reeves would dismiss these deaths as bad “timing” says plenty about what Republican governors value — optics over lives.”

Or as John Scalzi says, “They’re killing their own people because of politics. Not anyone else. Not any more. And they’ll keep doing it. For as long as it takes. Because this is how they think they will win.”

Reading the news this week puts me in mind again of Vaclav Havel’s essay “The Power of the Powerless” and how modern tyrants claim “the center of power is identical with the center of truth,” — it’s not simply that they’ve seized power, it’s righteous and just that they’re in charge.

I think that explains some of the deranged pushback against getting vaccinated. They talk about “choice” but obviously a lot of them are seething that anyone is making a different choice than they are. Harassing and threatening healthcare workers to prevent vaccinations. Coughing on people in stores. Mocking a kid for discussing his grandmother’s death from covid. Their god king, The Former Guy, said the virus wasn’t a big deal. His toady, Sen. Ted Cruz, said if Biden won, Democrats would immediately end all pandemic precautions. The center of power — remember, a lot of Republicans have chosen to believe that Trump is still president — has spoken. By refusing to conform, we dissent from Republican orthodoxy, and their fragile fee-fees can’t stand dissent, any more than they tolerate criticism. And as Paul Campos says, if they question any one part of the truth, their whole belief system could collapse.

So at the local level, even with school cases rising, they freak out at efforts to change that. A group of anti-maskers drove one San Diego-area school board out of its meeting, then appointed themselves the new board. One father compares the school’s directive to keep his kid in quarantine for a few days with a Gestapo order and brought zip ties to the school to make a citizen’s arrest of the principal (didn’t happen, fortunately). Dude, if this were Nazi Germany you’d face a shit-ton worse for challenging the authorities.

QAnon cultists are pressuring hospitals give Trump Virus patients ivermectin (feed stores are now selling out of it) instead of valid medical treatments. And we have predators like “Typhoid Ron” DeSantis ignoring Florida’s rising number of cases and trying to hide the numbers. Idaho gubernatorial candidate Janice McGeachin claiming vaccines are lethal. Or Rand Paul who wants Dr. Fauci in jail. Dave Daubenmire insists he hasn’t caught Covid, he’s been sickened by electrical energy from vaccinated people. Joe Rogan, who came down with Covid after performing stand-up shows in Florida, but still won’t piss off his audience by accepting science. Given his past claims that vaccine passports lead to dictatorship, we can assume his audience doesn’t want to hear “I was wrong, everyone should get vaccinated.”

We’ve had 800,000 excess deaths since February but the Republican stance remains the same, as Rebecca Solnit says: “some have the right to determine the truth more than others, and facts, science, history are likewise fetters to be shaken loose in pursuit of exactly your very own favorite version of reality, which you enforce through dominance, including outright violence.”

It doesn’t help, as LGM says, that a lot of media still won’t say outright that the real, if not the only issue, is the antivaxxers. If we’re stuck figuring out the endgame, it’s because too many people won’t get vaccinated. That’s what leads to the surge in cases (including among the vaccinated) which is why military doctors are having to help out. Eric Boehlert suggests after years of Trump safaris — talking to white, working-class Republicans about why those simple, plain-spoken Americans supported The Former Guy — reporters are having trouble seeing them as politically paranoid, anti-rational extremists (none of which ever came out during those safaris).

So the end result is we’re starting to debate whether it’s justifiable for hospitals to turn away the unvaxxed when space is tight (I don’t think the often-used comparison to smokers is justified  — smoking is an addiction, staying unvaccinated isn’t. And let’s face it, beds in ICUs are not currently unavailable because of too many smokers in hospital for cancer). And hospitals going short-staffed because of staff refusing vaccine mandates.

I think a harder line is definitely good, such as Biden now mandating vaccination for all federal workers and many employees outside the government. And increasing fines on airplane travelers who don’t wear masks. Unsurprisingly, Republicans who feel perfectly entitled to tell private businesses No Vaccine Requirements are furious that Biden dares tell private businesses what to do (I’ve heard speculation a lot of business owners will be thrilled — now they have an excuse to push vaccinations).

That said, Medscape concludes the way to change vaccine-hesitant minds is less confrontation, more persuasion — even allowing them to do it discreetly so their anti-vax peers won’t know (which is insane, but if it gets results, hey).

We should have been largely back to pre-pandemic normal by now. It does not bode well for this country that we aren’t getting close.

“The point is, if you wanted to stop evictions, you could do it, with legally appropriated money. In theory.” But in practice, even with lots of money available and a simple method of distribution — show up at eviction hearings, pay the debt — we can’t make it happen.

The same is true, Ezra Klein says about the humanitarian case for war: if we want to improve the lives of women, or medical care or anything else in the developing world, we have the money, the resources and the skills to do “far more good and less harm.” But as LGM says, that doesn’t generate money for military contractors, or satisfy the chickenhawks who glory in fighting a war from their living room.

Part of it is that we have a deranged, anti-American, white-supremacist, male-supremacist party that’s wildly unpopular — it’s won the popular vote once in a presidential election this century — but due to the structure of our government is often able to grind government to the halt. They’ve got right-wing judges into as many courts as possible. They’re coming for city councils and school boards. And election officials. And more city councils. And more school boards. And it’s only going to get worse because there’s enough extremists to oust anyone who doesn’t play ball. And nobody has the spine to step back — they’ll punish Liz Cheney for questioning Trump but they won’t say boo to Madison Cawthorn. Another example of spinelessness is that despite criminalizing abortion in Texas, they’re trying to pretend it’s nothing of the sort.

And it’s clear they’ll impeach a Democratic president for any reason, at any time they think they can get away with it.

We have liars who claim concentration camps for the oppressed, abused unvaccinated are inevitable. Maybe he believes it; maybe he’s catering to the people who do. Either way, it makes things worse. So do scam artist hatemongers like Mat Staver who claims vaccine mandates cause suicide, while encouraging people to give him money to Fight The Man.

Then we have “Typhoid Ron” DeSantis whose policies have made the Trump Virus much worse in Florida than necessary. Those extra deaths, he says “are a terrible thing … what we’re trying to do is say, ‘OK, what was not being done? Where was the gap?’ And the biggest gap was in the early treatment.” Not, of course, his efforts to prevent businesses and school boards from requiring masks or vaccine mandates.

Not that the right-wing public is any better — attacking breast cancer patients over a clinic’s mandatory mask policy, for instance. They pretend their issue is choice, but they’re willing to harass and intimidate medical workers so other people can’t make a choie they disagree with.

The right-wing hatemongers are getting louder. I don’t think Josh Bernstein has much political clout, but calling on the trucking industry to starve Democratic-majority areas until Biden resigns is still alarming rhetoric.

“In late July, anti-vax conspiracy theorist Chris McDonald asked for prayers for his father, who had contracted COVID-19. Two weeks later, he announced that his father had died. Last night, McDonald said COVID-19 vaccines are a plot to commit “genocide” and urged everyone to refuse to take them.” Right-Wing Watch

The media are listening to the national-security “experts” who, Ross Douthat says, “managed to build nothing in the political or military spheres that could survive for even a season without further American cash and military supervision”  — and unsurprisingly hate that Biden pulled us out (his fault, not theirs!). It’s slightly horrifying I agree with not only Douthat but Ann Coulter about this. I’m much less surprised I agree with this LGM post on the topic.

And let’s not forget, the America-Hating Party attempted a coup earlier this year. And they’re still nervous about their own leaders involvement — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is threatening telecoms that turn over member phone records from Jan. 6 to the investigating committee. I do find some amusement that 17 of the seditionists were represented by an anti-vax attorney who’s now come down with covid. Or that Rand Paul is pretending nobody’s studied ivermectin as a covid cure because they hate Trump (here’s a look at how ivermectin became an obsession). And if we criticize them and they get upset, we’re the special snowflakes.

A school board in Wisconsin has refused a free lunch program that’s free to the district too. They’re claiming that making free lunches available will make children spoiled.

Then there’s sports.

Then there’s lawyers.

But eventually, once in a while, horrible people get thoroughly ground under. So let’s have some schadenfraude, shall we?

Anti-Muslim bigot Laura Loomer sued the Muslim-rights group CAIR for supposedly conspiring to get her off Twitter. A judge threw out her case and charged her $125,000 for CAIR’s legal fees.

The first defendant in the kidnap plot against Mich. Governor Gretchen Whitmer gets six years — a low sentence because he sang like a canary.

An E/R doctor charged parents $50 to write medical-exemption letters to schools with mask mandates. He’s been fired.

Leash the kraken! A Michigan judge has slapped Sidney Powell, Lin Wood and other Stop The Nonexistent Steal attorneys with legal fees, requirements to attend law classes and requests the relevant bar associations discipline them. It’s not the only court giving The Former Guy’s attorneys their comeuppance.

A thirtysomething woman in Pennsylvania spat on a produce display, coughed and yelled that she had the Trump Virus. She’s getting a year in jail.

Republican scam artists Jacob Wuhl and Jack Burkman have been fined $5 million for making illegal robocalls to discourage voting (mail-in ballots will be tracked for mandatory vaccinations!).

Texas now has a website where you can report someone for trying to get an abortion or helping someone get an abortion (both illegal under Texas’ new forced-birther law). People are spamming the site big-time with porn and memes. It doesn’t eliminate the problems of this ugly law, but I’ll celebrate what small blows we can strike.

Lawsuits against vaccine mandates keep failing.

Build The Wall, an effort to crowdsource The Former Guy’s “big beautiful wall,” has been fighting a lawsuit for a year. And guess what, in all that time they haven’t paid their lawyers (I presume their in-house counsel, Trumpite slime Kris Kobach, gets his cut). So now the lawyers want the court to let them walk away, leaving Save The Wall only 30 days to find new attorneys (“Finding a lawyer I don’t think is a big problem. I think finding a lawyer who is willing to risk not getting paid is probably the issue here,” Crane said.)