COVID, We Don’t Recall, Elder Race, Filibuster Buster, Non-Voting Rights

Profanely Blunt About Vaxxing (Apologies to Aunt Tildy)

@hill_deeee

Answer to @semaj31273 As requested. ❤️ ##fuckcovid ##endthis ##together ##doyourpart

♬ original sound – Hillary

  • Twenty something years ago, I devoted two nights a week to volunteering in a St. Louis hospital emergency room. It went on for a couple of years.
     
    That was where I learned about the admission process they called triage. Technically, it was not triage, at least as the term was originally used.
     
    In France, where triage was invented, 18th century wartime physicians were overwhelmed with battlefield casualties. They devised a three-category based priority system.
     
    Patients who were likely to live without treatment were not to be treated.
     
    Patients who were likely to die no matter what treatment they received were not to be treated.
     
    Doctors would focus only on patients who would likely die without treatment, but whose chances would have the greatest increase with immediate care.
     
    It was ruthless and it was based largely on guesswork. A substantial number of wounded patients died who might have survived. But, in the aggregate, it did seem to maximize success.
     
    Now, more than 2 centuries later, in modern emergency rooms of US hospitals, triage is less ruthless. There are no hard fast categories. Everyone is treated. Nurses assigned to the Triage Desk simply make judgments about who is in immediate danger. More serious cases are taken in first. Everyone else waits, sometimes for hours. Lots of waiting in emergency rooms.
     
    COVID is changing that. Triage is sometimes going back to the brutal guesswork of historical battlefields of wartime France.
     
    Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit reports on the reports. In Idaho, as in other more rural states, overrun hospitals are turning away patients. Too many beds are already taken by unvaccinated victims of the pandemic. There is no more room in the inn.
     
    A few years ago, conservatives were scaring voters with tales of how Obamacare would bring us death panels. Bureaucrats, they said, would decide whether you would be allowed to live. Obamacare came to existence without those imaginary death panels.
     
    Anti-vaxxers have brought those old stories from falsehood to reality. Just from a different cause than was originally predicted.
     
  • Nicki Minaj’s cousin’s friend’s testicles have made international news before being debunked. Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson suggests an anti-vax slogan. I suspect a bit of sarcasm.
     

  • At The Onion, a new study finds that the COVID virus can be fooled by fake vaccine cards.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil kind of sort of celebrates California’s progress against COVID-19.
     
  • Congressional Member Madison Cawthorn gets incensed at the news. Major airlines plan to require passengers to get vaccinated:
    “you actually have a constitutionally protected right to free, unrestricted travel within the United States.”
     
    Tommy Christopher watches television’s Brian Williams commit brutal humor on poor Madison.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony has a theory about COVID hotspots and pro-recall areas in California. There seems to be a connection.
     
    Iron Knee suggests the connection may be average area-wide intelligence.

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz shows more caring, more empathy, for Republicans than Republicans seem to possess for themselves.
     
  • driftglass has little patience with prominent Republicans who are shocked at the evil their party has become after they have devoted a lifetime to dabbling in evil themselves.
     
    I dunno. I’m somewhat sympathetic to the Churchill World War II formula as he defended his willingness to deal with Soviet Russia.
    “If Hitler invaded Hell I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of Commons.”
    On balance, Hitler was the more immediate, the greater, danger.
     
    We are in a political battle that may determine whether the United States survives as a democratic republic. We may wish to consider that struggle when judging which Republican sinners deserve admission into heavenly political paradise.
     
  • Former president Trump is making political endorsements. For some reason he is paying acute attention to state officials in charge of counting votes. Scotties Toy Box reviews Arizona, where Mr. Trump goes full QAnon, backing a true believer for Secretary of State.
     
  • So Gavin Newsome defeats a recall in a California landslide. Yay!! tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors is frustrated by news coverage as Politico treats the massive victory as a narrow squeaker. So much for leftward bias in lamestream media.
     
  • A new sort of racial standard came to be in conservatism over my lifetime. Black membership in the family of the right provided a sort of cover for the core belief that racism exists only in the sense that small shrinking puddles remind us that there had once been a nearly forgotten, no longer relevant, rainstorm. I’m no racist. I voted for Larry Elder.
     
    Green Eagle, writing a few days before the Newsome landslide in California, explains the appeal of extreme conservatism to a certain sort of Black public figure.
     
    There is obvious danger in applying any race-based assumption. Some African-Americans will find some degree of conservatism genuinely appealing, with no cynical calculation. But it does seem that California’s Larry Elder is a special case. He carries the ideological football past any apparent legitimate goal posts, through the end zone, out of the stadium, across the ocean, all the way to the flame at top of the mountain in conservative Olympia. He makes arguments that could make white supremacists blush:
     
    On the White descendants of slave owners:
    Their legal property was taken away from them after the Civil War, so you could make an argument that the people that are owed reparations are not only just Black people but also the people whose ‘property’ was taken away after the end of the Civil War.
     
    Really?
     
  • Dave Dubya shows how a high school project about the deadly dangers of dihydrogen monoxide reveals what is behind the controversy around Critical Race Theory.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever considers California’s unrecalled governor and one lesson we have learned about the Republican approach to voting and a hope about Democrats.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara suggests that automatically registering eligible voters would run against what the founders of the Constitution stood for. It violates the basic right of every individual not to register.
     
    Seems a stretch. Registration makes voting available to any who wish to exercise it. Michael essentially argues that making voting available to eligible voters would violate the rights of those who do not want even the ability to vote.
     
    I suppose we could argue that

    • the existence of a crosswalk at a busy intersection violates the basic right of pedestrians who not only do not wish to cross, but go beyond that, not wanting even the ability to cross.
    • Every post office violates the rights of those who don’t want to have the right to mail a letter.
    • Physical mobility violates the rights of anyone who craves personal paralysis.

     
    Wow. I could do this all day.

  • The news is that Vice President Mike Pence reached out to former VP Dan Quayle. Was there any legal way to help Donald Trump stop the counting of votes? The Palmer Report finds disconcerting that, by saying no, Dan Quayle may single handedly have saved the Republic, and draws a lesson we should all take to heart.
     
    My one minor quibble. Dan Quayle had an abysmal public persona. He simply was no good in front of the camera. Behind the scenes may have been another matter.
     
  • Another Texas tragedy comes through MadMikesAmerica. Michael John Scott reports on an arrest of a committed Trump supporter who planned and carried out the murder of a 50 year old woman and the wounding of her husband because they were Biden voters.
     
  • Frances Langum has been watching the Fox Network, where Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick goes full race conspiracy. Seems immigration is a plot to replace real Americans with brown immigrants.
     
  • Former President Bush speaks on the 20th anniversary of an attack on America. He doesn’t mention one time president Trump but it seems clear to whom he refers as he speaks of a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment.
     
    So Andy Borowitz sees Trump strike back, calling Bush ungrateful. After all, Trump kept Dubya from remaining the worst President in American history.
     
  • As he reads startling new reporting, PZ Myers recoils at horrible revelations about Facebook. Key conclusion:
     
    The legitimate social functions were just a passing phase in Facebook’s process of becoming whatever the hell it is now.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life explains what you and I and all other citizens who actually want government to function can do to end the Senate filibuster.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger goes global, asking folks from pretty much everywhere about climate change and which countries are dealing with it.
     
  • Max’s Dad is back (Yay-y-y!) with another of his evidence-filled, factual rants. This time it about the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
     
  • Sometimes a cartoon says it succinctly. In Hackwhackers we see Trump about to cast the nation into the fire of war and we see a general maneuvering carefully through the constitutional need for civilian control.
     
    The general calls a routine contact in the Chinese military and talks a nervous China out of a preemptive attack on the US. Then he talks with the US military establishment about established Nuremberg law prohibiting them from following illegal orders. He mentions one wild example, the launching of a hypothetical unprovoked war.
     
    So a President endangers our country
    and
    General Mark Milley gently saves us.
     
    Which of those do you suppose currently enrages prominent Republicans?
     
  • Vixen Strangely, at Strangely Blogged, reviews the demand by Senator Marco Rubio that General Milley resign. Vixen Strangely suggests that the crime committed by General Milley, the crime that enrages Republicans, was the unauthorized exercise of competence.
     
  • If, in some cosmic miracle, I ever meet White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, and if, by the devil’s own luck, I should offend, I have one preemptory request. Please allow me, at the outset, to apologize.
     
    News Corpse pays attention on our behalf as the Press Secretary is asked about Republican attacks on General Milley. She pretty much leaves hostile partisans and their aggressive press allies on the floor bleeding from every facial orifice. That would be facial. (Aunt Tilly has been especially insistent about language).
     
  • Julian Sanchez applauds the reversal as Apple postpones a well-intentioned bad idea of tracking the contents of cell phones in order to eliminate child pornography. Julian’s approval is tempered by Apple’s apparent commitment to keep trying.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce explains his comment policy. Among other common courtesy standards that stand as comment ever-blocks are preaching, bible quoting, and evangelizing.
     
    That strikes me as sensible for a blog that explains his transition from conservative Christianity to atheism.
     
    Other comment prohibitions include praying for you and You are going to hell and You never were saved and You never were a Christian.
     
    Here’s the thing for me. Bruce Gerencser has been in painful ill health for a while. AND, although he is younger than am I, he reminds me a great deal of another atheist I still admire. I have very much missed my father since he died nearly 30 years ago.
     
    I generally do not pray for those who object. I simply wish Bruce well.
     
  • The whole country, perhaps the whole world, changed that day 20 years ago. Nojo counts the times witnesses to history experienced just that sort of never-forget day and later wondered about those who could not remember how things were in the before times.
     
    For me, that change-the-universe experience had to have been this.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson explains each day’s events in plain, dispassionate terms. Exactly 2 years into national news, she explains how it was all ushered in with a yellow jacket sting, and how it ballooned from there.
     
  • Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes has had his own experiences with deteriorating health. He remembers the beginnings of much of Britain’s social support systems. But he has special affection for the National Health Service.
     
  • Infidel753 has wise and pithy observations on de-worming, tolerance, time travel, beauty, and more.
     
  • Sarah Cooper has a thought on a once-upon-a-royal-couple
     

  • Reductress provides helpful instructions on how to ask someone to turn down their music without sounding like a fox news correspondent.
     
  • Sports enthusiasts around the world are relieved that this persistent question has finally been addressed. The Journal of Improbable Research finds research by a renowned Belgian scientist on why hockey players score more than soccer players.

– Podcasts –
 

One thought on “COVID, We Don’t Recall, Elder Race, Filibuster Buster, Non-Voting Rights”

  1. …the US military establishment about established Nuremberg law prohibiting them from following illegal orders.

    Like, oh, I don’t know, Iraq? It’s called “aggressive war,” and it’s why a bunch of German and Japanese were hanged. And I don’t remember any generals or admirals saying anything when Chimpy ordered the invasion. They all pretty much strapped on their six-shooters and saluted. But Americans can’t be guilty of war crimes. Just ask any president.

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