As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.
The New York Effing Times, where there is a cognitive dissonance between the editorial page and the news pages, had an editorial on the existential threat to our democracy posed by the Trump Republican Party:
It is regular citizens who threaten election officials and other public servants, who ask, “When can we use the guns?” and who vow to murder politicians who dare to vote their conscience. It is Republican lawmakers scrambling to make it harder for people to vote and easier to subvert their will if they do. It is Donald Trump who continues to stoke the flames of conflict with his rampant lies and limitless resentments and whose twisted version of reality still dominates one of the nation’s two major political parties.
In short, the Republic faces an existential threat from a movement that is openly contemptuous of democracy and has shown that it is willing to use violence to achieve its ends. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists. Rather, survival depends on looking back and forward at the same time.
Truly grappling with the threat ahead means taking full account of the terror of that day a year ago. Thanks largely to the dogged work of a bipartisan committee in the House of Representatives, this reckoning is underway. We know now that the violence and mayhem broadcast live around the world was only the most visible and visceral part of the effort to overturn the election. The effort extended all the way into the Oval Office, where Mr. Trump and his allies plotted a constitutional self-coup. [snip]
This is where looking forward comes in. Over the past year, Republican lawmakers in 41 states have been trying to advance the goals of the Jan. 6 rioters — not by breaking laws but by making them. Hundreds of bills have been proposed and nearly three dozen laws have been passed that empower state legislatures to sabotage their own elections and overturn the will of their voters, according to a running tally by a nonpartisan consortium of pro-democracy organizations. [snip]
Thus the Capitol riot continues in statehouses across the country, in a bloodless, legalized form that no police officer can arrest and that no prosecutor can try in court.
The Times being The Times, no ink or electrons are expended examining the blame the media in general or The Times in particular shoulders for the current state of affairs. Until and unless they come to grips with that and make changes, they're part of the problem, not the solution (not holding our breath).
As The Times editorial notes, the reckoning is underway in the form of the January 6 committee's upcoming must- see- tv:
They’ve interviewed more than 300 witnesses, collected tens of thousands of documents and traveled around the country to talk to election officials who were pressured by Donald Trump.
Now, after six months of intense work, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection is preparing to go public.
In the coming months, members of the panel will start to reveal their findings against the backdrop of the former president and his allies’ persistent efforts to whitewash the riots and reject suggestions that he helped instigate them. The committee also faces the burden of trying to persuade the American public that their conclusions are fact-based and credible.
But the nine lawmakers — seven Democrats and two Republicans — are united in their commitment to tell the full story of Jan. 6, and they are planning televised hearings and reports that will bring their findings out into the open.
Their goal is not only to show the severity of the riot, but also to make a clear connection between the attack and Trump’s brazen pressure on the states and Congress to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate election as president.
Let's also get those criminal referrals ready to go, please.
On the COVID-19 front, keep your eye on the hospitalization numbers:
As the United States continues to see a huge spike in coronavirus cases driven by the omicron variant, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, Anthony S. Fauci, says the better way to track the variant’s impact is to look at growing hospitalizations.
The United States was averaging more than 400,000 new cases each day as of Monday, double the previous week’s rate, according to Washington Post data, and is expected to soon hit as many as 1 million cases per day. Fauci, speaking on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, said “the real bottom line that you want to be concerned about is: Are we getting protected by the vaccines from severe disease leading to hospitalization?”
Hospitalizations are up 31 percent from last week, and deaths increased by 37 percent, with about 1,500 Americans dying of covid-19 each day. Experts have warned that this surge will be driven by the unvaccinated, as those who are vaccinated and boosted would have considerable protection from serious illness.
Fauci warned of the broader dangers on CNN: “Even if the rate of hospitalization is lower with omicron than it is with delta, there is still the danger that you will have a surging of hospitalizations that might stress the health-care system.”
Where is the problem most acute? Why, mostly in Republican- governed anti-vax, anti-mask states, of course:
Lower vaccination rates and fewer mask and vaccine mandates have created a much different environment for the omicron variant to spread in the South, leaving experts unsure whether outbreaks will end up deadlier than in the North.
Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi are among the states experiencing the sharpest increases in covid-19 hospitalizations since Christmas, according to data tracked by The Washington Post. And the situation may only get worse, as initial outbreaks in metropolitan areas spread to more poorly vaccinated rural regions.
The unvaccinated are causing great harm to the health care system in this country, as they play a major role in perpetuating the pandemic. At this point, we're losing interest in what harm they're doing to themselves and their families.
What happens when a cosseted pro football player is humored and enabled rather than helped? This:
Coach Bruce Arians announced afterward that Brown no longer plays for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, which Brown had already declared with his behavior. That Brown, 33, could choose the time and manner of his departure, no matter how bizarre, should shame the Buccaneers and many others across the NFL. All the times Brown should have received serious help or significant punishment over the past three years, he received more chances to play football.
Each time one team grew tired of his antics, another clamored to sign him. When two women accused Brown of sexual assault and the NFL suspended him for half a season for a separate battery charge involving a moving company employee, Tom Brady leaped to rehabilitate him. When he used a fake vaccination card this year, the NFL slapped his wrist with a three-game suspension and Arians allowed competitive desperation to trump his zero-tolerance vow about Brown.
Well, any league that will tolerate the on-going shame of having Li'l Danny Snyder as an owner is pretty much capable of tolerating anything.
"Now, for something completely different,"* please head over to Infidel 753's link round-up to interesting posts he curated from around the Internet. There's plenty to interest even the most jaded reader. Also check out his ten most important stories of 2021 -- hard to argue with his choices!
* Yes, that was a Monty Python reference.
