@musclesandnursing ##duet with @andrejhepburn
- In the perpetual negotiation of the Joes: Green Eagle has an idea for Joe Biden on how to deal with Joe Manchin.
- Glenn Geist, residing in MadMikesAmerica, is irate about the blithe misinformation, and lapses in logic, about COVID that have resulted in 700,000 deaths. He focuses on one self-proclaimed expert who is leading an unknown number into long stays in ICU units, forever damaged health and, for some, a final trip to the morgue.
- A Million Parent March? Well… No, actually.
Thousands protest? Nope.
Hundreds turn out to oppose? Not that either.
In a jurisdiction covering nearly 10 million residents, M. Bouffant at Web of Evil is irritated at news coverage about an anti-school vaccination mandate protest that numbers literally in the dozens.
- The Propaganda Professor takes a look at the strange anti-vax narrative that conflates of vaccines with 1940s fascism.
It is true that my high school education has faded, having been overrun with life experiences stretching out more than half a century.
I confess I just don’t remember Nazi officials who had followed orders from Hitler or Mussolini having later been convicted of pounding on doors and begging inhabitants to accept safeguards from horrible death.
- Scotties Toy Box contains news that Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has turned back a challenge to Maine’s vaccine mandate for healthcare workers. The unsuccessful challenge was based on religious grounds. Seems vaccines are tested on human embryonic cells.
Scottie helpfully lists of lots and lots of medications similarly tested. So the same religious objectors will want to avoid aspirin, Trump recommended hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin (even for parasites in livestock).
- At The Onion, Florida’s educational system is going full speed to stay up‑to‑date, revising guidelines to reflect the very latest misinformation.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara says vaccine mandates work and vaccine mandates save lives. He goes on to say that vaccine mandates are wrong.
Well, fair enough. Lots of things that work can be opposed on moral, rather than practical, grounds.
He then quotes the Libertarian Gospel according to Ayn Rand. He thinks she supports his view. She doesn’t.
Confronted with earlier epidemics, she opposed forced inoculation in which government agents might hold subjects down, if necessary, while administering involuntary vaccination. Mr. LaFerrara may be surprised to learn that nobody currently advocates that.
He quotes her as supporting forced quarantines in order…
…to protect those people who are not ill … to prevent the people who are ill from passing on their illness to others.
He seems unaware that today her logic is the precise rationale, not for forced quarantines, but for requiring mandates by major employers.
- PZ Myers explains which critical step is often missed when adopting a new idea.
- In case you want to buddy up to a MAGA believer, CalicoJack in The Psy of Life encourages a kinder, gentler approach and points to a study on why conspiracy theorists become true believers.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit discovers a conspiracy theory group that goes beyond flat earth. It seems birds aren’t real.
- Remember the 2020 controversy where Trump and others insisted there was voter fraud? You do?
Okay. Do you remember the bounty Texas offered to anyone who could provide evidence of voter fraud? Maybe?
Iron Knee at Political Irony reports that a fraudulent voter was finally found and someone finally qualified for the reward. It’s just that it was not the precise fraud that had been expected. So the reward was somewhat less. Wrong conspiracy.
- Hackwhackers has the documentation as a violent, militant group from the far right quietly infiltrates state and local government.
- Andy Borowitz reports that Steve Bannon has been apprehended fleeing the country disguised as a man who recently took a shower.
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged reacts to Donald Trump launching a social media platform called Truth.
One Twitter reaction that seemed on target:
- In 2017, new President Trump was clear about why he was firing FBI Director James Comey. Comey had refused to end ongoing investigations into whether Trump had engaged in illegal activities with Russia. That was serious.
Then it got into the purist of pure petty. Comey was to have been fired while he was in Los Angeles on an official trip. He wasn’t to have been informed until he was prevented from boarding a plane back home. He would be stranded in California.
But Comey’s interrum replacement at the FBI wouldn’t leave Comey on the West coast. Comey was flown back to Washington. Trump was furious. That outrage was before he found out McCabe would not end all those investigations into Mr. Trump.
So when McCabe was fired, the purity of petty reached new levels of flat out raw. Trump gloated as McCabe was let go a few hours before he was eligible for full retirement benefits. His pension would be taken away. Tee Hee.
Tommy Christopher reports how McCabe went to court and just now got a settlement. The firing was reversed, pension restored, back payments made, health benefits resumed, and attorney fees covered.
Tee Hee, Mr. Trump.
- Oh my. Looks like that DID sting! News Corpse notes Donald Trump’s reaction to the news that Andrew McCabe has prevailed and gotten back pretty much everything Trump tried to take from him.
Tantrum. That would be one way to describe Trump’s reaction. Tantrum, yeah that’s pretty close.
- Republican television personality Ana Navarro doesn’t much care for Donald Trump’s childish smear of an American icon:
Part of the Trump statement about General Powell, such as it is:
He was a classic RINO [Republican in Name Only], if even that, always being the first to attack other Republicans. He made plenty of mistakes, but anyway, may he rest in peace! - Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has never supported President Obama, except in that he isn’t Trump. He is asked to imagine Obama showing the same disrespect to Colin Powell:
- Frances Langum watches the new chair of the Iowa Democratic party, the first African American to hold that position, describe lynching threats from MAGA types offended by his criticisms of Donald Trump.
- Liz Cheney votes with Republicans almost all the time. But even so…
In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson tells us why Republicans regard her as an existential threat to the party and what House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is trying to do about it.
- Dave Dubya goes to Twitter to point out how our republic is failing, and falling into authoritarianism.
- Imani Gandy is a bit frustrated with the current state of American politics:
- The Palmer Report considers whether the Supreme Court will actually rule on the Texas anti-abortion law. Apparently members of the court think the national press was unfair 8 plus weeks ago after their middle-of-the-night non-decision, nada-decisis ruling, which was the legalese equaivalent of this is just too complicated for us to think about.
- Julian Sanchez of Cato Institute helpfully defines Critical Race Theory:
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the numbers. Men are pretty much satisfied with the treatment women get in society. Women: Not so much.
- SilverAppleQueen doesn’t much care for Trans activists disrupting a Women’s Rights conference.
- driftglass does not see a solution to the media problem of both-sides-are-the-same unless human nature or the marketplace changes.
Probably true, and neither probably will happen.
For myself, I have no problem with truth being in the middle, if that is a considered conclusion.
I object to it as an unexamined premise. That is how it becomes yet another symptom of lazy thinking.
- At The Moderate Voice, retired U.S. Airforce officer Dorian de Wind remembers a vacation in Mexico years ago that went horribly wrong. Hurricane Wilma hit, and the residents experiencing catastrophic loss, nonetheless helped him, his family, and thousands of other foreigners make it through that dangerous time.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz asks what might be on our minds when we think we are dying. He has a bit of insight from personal experience.
- Nan’s Notebook asks readers where they are spiritually, and how they define that word. She asks Christians not to participate so, out of respect, I merely read with interest. She gets some insightful responses.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce looks to the Bible to figure out why so many Evangelicals abuse their children.
Spoiler alert: It’s because kids’ sins are original.
- Reductress saves countless readers from uncertainty, with a quiz that can tell you whether you are entering the dark despairing night of the soul, or just missed your subway connection.
- As we approach another season of joy, Nojo provides a helpful list of happy things to think about instead of everything else.
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors goes to Brazil to show a great ad for safe sex.
- Infidel753 explains the issues he has, and does not have, with pornography.
- My long time friend, Unabashedly American Darrell Michaels, momentarily pauses his wild-eyed pursuit of American leftists who are ruining the country (sorry about all that ruin, Darrell) as he tours Greece. He provides fascinating pictures and a creative title. Thank you, old friend.
- The Journal of Improbable Research discovers experiments by the University of Sussex to determine how hard or easy it is to recognize stretched out photos of faces. That is something that keeps me awake at night.
– Podcasts –