Freedumb Truck Nuts Ending DC Circle Jerk

The anti- government, Trumpist truck convoy is ending its largely ignored display of aggrieved ignorance circling the DC beltway and heading west!

The People’s Convoy encamped at Hagerstown Speedway for the past three weeks is leaving to return to California, at least temporarily, organizer Mike Landis announced Sunday night.

The group has used the speedway as a staging area for nearly daily trips by a parade of big rigs, cars and campers to the Washington, D.C., area to protest mandates meant to control COVID-19 and seek a repeal of the pandemic state of emergency.

During a livestream of its nightly rally Sunday, Landis read off a list of strict COVID-control measures that he said were pending in California.

“These 10 bills that I just read are up for a vote next week in California,” he said. “To me, they are the reason that we are here.

“I think stopping those is more important at this point in time than getting the emergency declaration repealed because that’s already in place and we need to stop stuff like these bills from getting in place,” Landis said, “otherwise, the rest of us that don’t live in California are going to end up subject to the same situation.”

So, not- a- public- health- professional Landis will be wasting more time and fuel in his crusade to keep measures to blunt a future pandemic from interfering with his and his fellow numbnuts' Freedumb!!

So, roll on, Freedumb fighters!  Hope you won't have to pee your pants in California or ever have to be admitted to an ICU in your quest to relieve humanity from the scourge of public health measures!

COVID-Positive Palin Out On The Town

Failed vice presidential candidate and half-term Governor of Alaska Sarah "Sarah the Spreader" Palin is in New York City to pursue a frivolous lawsuit against the New York Times for defamation. The defiantly unvaccinated clown also tested positive for COVID before the trial could begin, so according to the city's health policies she should self-quarantine for at least 5 days to protect others. According to reports, that didn't stop the recklessly clueless sociopath from dining out at two Italian restaurants Tuesday and Wednesday nights:

"Sarah Palin is not letting COVID-19 stop her from enjoying New York City’s culinary offerings.

The former Alaska governor returned to Elio's restaurant Wednesday night and dined outdoors just days after it was revealed she tested positive for COVID-19. Palin, who has touted the fact that she is not vaccinated, was seen dining inside the Upper East Side Italian restaurant on Saturday, before her diagnosis. The city requires proof of vaccination to eat indoors.

And WNYC/Gothamist confirmed the former vice presidential candidate dined al fresco Tuesday night at Campagnola, another Italian restaurant in the area."

You need a certificate of vaccination to eat indoors at New York City restaurants so the nitwit avoided a violation of COVID health restrictions after receiving the positive test. But the city had to issue a statement encouraging, 

"...any New Yorker who came into contact with Ms. Palin to get tested, just as we encourage all New Yorkers to get tested regularly, especially those who believe they may have been exposed to someone who tested positive for COVID-19.”

Palin obviously doesn't care whom she infects with COVID, as long as she grabs the spotlight for a day or two. The sooner she returns to Alaska the better, where she can keep an eye on Russia -- if not her kids -- from her house. 

(photo: Jim Ruymen/UPI)

Regrets, They've Had A Few (Cont.)

 

 

... although, again, probably not this anti- vax Republican loon:

Longtime Arlington Republican activist Kelly Canon, a grassroots organizer and vocal critic of vaccine requirements, died Monday of complications from COVID-19.

The Arlington Republican Party announced Canon’s death on Facebook. [snip]

Canon was recently hospitalized for COVID-19-related pneumonia, one of the most serious complications of the virus.

A month ago, Canon attended a symposium in Burleson dedicated to fighting vaccine mandates, according to her Facebook posts. Attendees included Dallas physician and vaccine skeptic Dr. Peter McCullough, who previously said on a Fox News show that there’s “no clinical reason to go get vaccinated.”

Canon said on Facebook in November that her employer granted her religious exemption request, so she would not be required to get a vaccine.

Canon was well-known for her successful grassroots campaign in 2015 to ban red light cameras in Arlington. They were later banned statewide.  [snip]

A former vice president of the Arlington Tea Party, Canon left the organization in 2016 because of its support for a tax increase to build a new stadium for the Texas Rangers. Canon, along with a few others, created the Southeast Tarrant Tea Party, and Arlington voters passed the tax increase that year.

She gets extra loon points for being a tea bagger and for her being ok with letting people get away with running red lights.  Freedumb!!

She didn't have to die.  She has had choices to make in life, and one of her last ones was her worst.  To the extent she endangered others by her choices and actions, sympathy is in short supply here.

(Image:  Canon/ Twitter via Crooks & Liars)

Regrets, They've Had A Few (Cont.)

 

... although likely not this low IQAnon missing link who went to her just reward thinking she had "bacterial pneumonia":

A leading QAnon promoter who urged both her followers and strangers she passed on the street not to take the COVID vaccine died Thursday of the coronavirus, making her just the latest vaccine opponent killed by the disease.

Cirsten Weldon had amassed tens of thousands of followers across right-wing social media networks by promoting the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy under the screenname “CirstenW.” She was prominent enough to become a sort of QAnon interpreter for comedian conspiracy theorist Roseanne Barr and started recording videos about QAnon with her.

Weldon focused on attacking vaccines and other efforts to fight COVID-19, saying in one video that Dr. Anthony Fauci “needs to be hung from a rope.” She claimed the vaccine killed people and even recorded herself yelling at people standing in line to receive vaccines.

“The vaccines kill, don’t get it!” Weldon warned the waiting vaccine recipients in an undated video posted to one of her online accounts. “This is how gullible these idiots are. They’re all getting vaccine!”  [Ed.:  "Yeah!  They're not smart =cough= like me! =hack=")

In late December, however, Weldon started showing symptoms of coronavirus infection. In her last video, posted on Dec. 28, Weldon struggled through her remarks about the coming overthrow of the United States government, coughing and complaining that she was exhausted.

Three days later, Weldon was hospitalized in Camarillo, California. She posted a picture of herself wearing an oxygen mask to Instagram and claimed she had “bacterial pneumonia.” Weldon wrote in a post on the social media network Telegram that she refused to take coronavirus treatment remdesivir, calling it “Dr Fauci’s Resmedervir (sic).” (our emphasis)

Talk about dying to own the libs.  Once again, Darwin rules.

Needless to say, fellow lowIQAnon conspiracists aren't taking this news well.  And, as one might expect, the deluded dolts are aiming their rage at precisely the wrong targets:

After Weldon’s death, her QAnon allies threatened to pursue violent action against staff at the hospital where she died. Scott McKay, a QAnon personality known as the “Patriot Streetfighter,” said he would publicize the names of doctors and nurses involved in treating Weldon, saying he wanted to “put the fear into these medical professionals” in a Telegram post. McKay proposed the hospital staff be sentenced to death, or be murdered in vigilante violence.

“If it’s not done in a military tribunal then it’s going to be done in the street eventually and not to my wishes,” McKay wrote. “That’s my greatest fear. But if it’s necessary, it’s going to be necessary.”  (our emphasis)

We're not lawyers or law enforcement, but that sounds like a terrorist threat.  Time to put that "Patriot Streetfighter" behind bars (but make sure he has plenty of horse de-wormer, though, in case he comes down with "bacterial pneumonia"). 

(Image: Weldon, via YouTube screenshot)

Regrets, They've Had A Few: Freedumb Or Death Edition

 

Republican political activist Kelly Ernby, a fierce critic of mandatory vaccinations in her home state of California, and active in Republican politics, served 10 years as a deputy district attorney in Orange County. That should have given her the benefit of the doubt for some common sense. Nevertheless, Ms. Ernby often weighed in on vaccine mandates, saying:

"I don’t think that the government should be involved in mandating what vaccines people are taking. I think that’s a decision between doctors and their patients. We have evidence that there are side effects and things that happen — not all vaccines are the same. Ultimately, we need to be very careful. If the government is going to mandate vaccines, what else are they going to mandate?”

Ms. Ernby won't have to worry about vaccines these days, since she passed away -- unvaccinated --  from COVID-19, at the early age of 46, but not before she gave an anti-vaxx speech a month ago:

"As recently as Dec. 4, she spoke against them during a rally held outside Irvine City Hall. Organized by the UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton chapters of Turning Point USA, the rally drew dozens in attendance, according to the Daily Titan, a CSUF student newspaper.

'There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now,' Ernby said."

Not even death, apparently.

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Republicans are determined to prolong the pandemic, part infinity:

At the entrance to the Lowe’s in a central Ohio strip mall, a bright blue-and-white sign tells customers that, under local ordinances, they must wear a face covering inside. Next door, at Hale’s Ales & Kitchen, a sign asks customers to please be patient with a staff shortage — with no mention of masks.

The city line between Columbus and suburban Hilliard crosses right through the strip mall, Mill Run Square. In Columbus, where the Lowe’s Home Improvement Store lies, the city council early in the coronavirus pandemic created a mask requirement that remains in place. In Hilliard, where Hales is located, the city council has not imposed a mask rule, despite entreaties from the top county health official as coronavirus cases spiked.

Under a new law in Ohio — one of at least 19 states this year that have restricted state or local authorities from safeguarding public health amid the coronavirus pandemic — Franklin County’s health commissioner Joe Mazzola can no longer intervene. The county health department was stripped of its power to compel people to wear masks even as the omicron variant fuels a fifth coronavirus surge in the United States.

“We’ve not been able to put in place the policy that would protect our community,” Mazzola said.

The number of states that have passed laws similar to Ohio’s is proliferating fast, from eight identified in one study in May to more than double that many as of last month, according to an analysis by Temple University’s Center for Public Health Law Research. And around the country, many more measures are being debated or being prepared for legislative sessions to start early in the new year.

These laws — the work of Republican legislators — inhibit health officers’ ability to require masks, promote vaccinations or take other steps, such as closing or limiting the number of patrons in restaurants, bars and other indoor public settings. Often, the measures shift those decisions from health experts to elected officials at a time when such coronavirus-fighting strategies have become politically radioactive.

The article's headline, "Anger over mask mandates, other covid rules, spurs states to curb powers of public health officials," would lead one to think that the anger grew spontaneously (like that of the "Tea Party" astroturfers of a decade ago);  it begs the question "who's responsible for stoking that irrational anger in the first place?"

Meanwhile, the toll on heroic health care workers that we see on our screens is mounting:

As more than 7,800 Americans are admitted into hospitals with the virus each day, from Michigan to New Hampshire, health care workers are once again finding themselves overwhelmed with the number of patients in need of care -- not only for COVID-19, but for other illnesses and winter-related ailments.

"We are burnt out, we are tired and we are disheartened. So much of what we see on a daily basis is preventable," Sarah Rauner, chief nurse practitioner at Beaumont Health in Troy, Michigan, told ABC News. "We are still living this every day."

In Wisconsin, just 4% of intensive care unit beds are currently available.

Sue Wolfe, a nurse at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, told ABC News that in her 38-year tenure as a nurse at the hospital, she has never seen anything like this surge.

"This place is so busy, so packed. ... We have patients coming in all the time, waiting in the waiting room, waiting in the hallways, waiting on carts, waiting to go upstairs," Wolfe said. "We also have a waiting room that's packed full of people that are coming in more and more each day with COVID."

Nearly 100% of the people requiring hospitalization are the unvaccinated, taking up ICU beds that might be needed for people with other life-threatening conditions.  

Despite all of this, holiday spending showed the biggest gain in 17 years:

The latest COVID-19 variant is upending holiday plans for tens of thousands of travelers — but it didn’t do much damage to holiday shopping.

Airlines canceled hundreds more flights Sunday, citing staffing problems tied to COVID-19, as the nation’s travel woes extended beyond Christmas, with no clear indication when normal schedules would resume.

But shoppers shrugged off the omicron variant, and holiday sales rose at the fastest pace in 17 years, according to one spending measure. [snip]

Despite omicron, American consumers appeared undaunted. Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks all kinds of payments, including cash and debit cards, reported Sunday that holiday sales had risen 8.5% from a year earlier, the biggest annual gain in 17 years. Mastercard SpendingPulse had expected an 8.8% increase.

The Washington Post editorial board calls for voting rights legislation, but uses a lot of "shoulds" instead of "musts":

American democracy frayed in 2021, as Republicans in states such as Georgia and Texas passed laws making it harder to vote, premised on the lie that fraud tipped the 2020 presidential election. As GOP-controlled state legislatures forced through these antidemocratic policies on party-line votes, the U.S. Senate was silent, the Democratic majority unable to respond because Republicans filibustered bill after bill to ease access to the ballot box. Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced last week that he intends to change this dynamic early next year, bringing up voting rights legislation once again and taking more assertive procedural moves to advance it.

Good. Voting is not an issue like health-care policy or tax rates, on which there is reasonable debate. No senator should cheer any move to weaken minority rights in the chamber, but these specific circumstances should compel even the most traditionalist of senators to contemplate change. President Biden says he supports suspending the filibuster rules to get it done.  [snip]

Mr. Schumer should push hard to advance both voting bills. And if Republicans continue to fight them, Senate Democrats should look at reforming the filibuster.

"Democracy dies in darkness mush." Yawn.

It is hereby recommended that you pay a visit to Infidel 753's incomparable link round-up for a stimulating, eclectic array of links to posts from around the Internet.  As the Moody Blues once said, "Go Now"!

"Remember This Ad. Before You Get Desperately Sick In A Hospital Bed"

 

Here's an ad from the American Hospital Association running in the Washington Post and New York Times today, joining appeals from hospital groups in Minnesota and Ohio urging the unvaccinated to get their shot (click to enlarge):

 

It's a message that obviously needs to go waaaay beyond the generally attuned readership of the Post and Times, though no amount of reason or appeal to humanity seems to be entering the closed minds of the unvaccinated who, as the ad points out, are 14 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than the vaccinated.  They'd rather die if it means owning the libs.

Something something Darwinism.

When The Cult Turns On Its Golden Calf

 

In recent appearances, the Malignant Loser has been belatedly touting vaccinations to fight the COVID pandemic -- we'll give him credit, as does the White House, and a round of golf claps for that.  As expected, though, it caused some of his most ardent cultists to recoil in horror:

As the president’s new, unabashed booster endorsement rippled out across right-wing social media, it was met with an combustible mix of anger, confusion, contorted excuses, and denial so pure it’s as if the former president had never uttered a word.

For a sign of just how severely Trump wrong-footed himself with his base by endorsing boosters, look no further than the editorial cartoonist Ben Garrison. The doodler’s devotion to the 45th president has been slavish, but Garrison’s opposition to the vaccine has also been stalwart. His latest cartoon opus shows Trump riding aboard on the “Big Pharma Vaccine Bandwagon” as he’s booed by the MAGA-hatted masses.

Here's the Garrison cartoon:

There's more spittle-flecked anti- vaccine lunacy at the link, but this summarizes it pretty well:

While MAGA and anti-vax leaders tried to excuse, dismiss or ignore the former president’s booster boosting, some in the rank-and-file of the far-right movement weren’t ready to forgive and forget, instead training their fire directly at the 45th president.

A message posted to a popular Telegram channel dedicated to “controversial media” and “uncensored views” read: “How quickly ‘Trumpers’ and liberal-conservatives forget that this entire COVID debacle, including vaccines and mass vaccination, was initiated and promoted under Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s watch.”

The post continued by arguing that Trump and the GOP don’t occupy the “moral high ground” on Covid and should not be trusted anymore than Biden and the Democrats: “Democrats are corrupt. Republicans are corrupt,” the post reads. “If you’re still on that merry-go-round then time to wake up and join us over here where TRUTH and FREEDOM is prioritised[sic] over party politics.”

They may prioritize "TRUTH" and "FREEDOM" in their own benighted mis-understanding of the concepts, but certainly not science, common sense and self- preservation.

The Republican Covidiot Death Cult

 

As Republicans try mightily to pin the blame for the continuing COVID pandemic (roughly 1,000 deaths/day) on the Biden Administration, the Kaiser Family Foundation has identified a certain group (spoiler alert: "the Republican base") as the true culprits for the ongoing misery and disruption:

... The partisan divide between vaccinated and unvaccinated adults became even more evident as larger shares of the population received COVID-19 vaccines. Now, six months later, in October 2021, one-quarter (27%) of U.S. adults say they have not gotten a COVID-19 vaccine, but the unvaccinated population is now disproportionately made up of those who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning, with six in ten (60%) identifying as Republican or Republican-leaning (compared to about four in ten of the U.S. total adult population¹) and just one in six (17%) calling themselves Democrats or Democratic-leaning.  [snip]

Similar to the overall differences between unvaccinated and vaccinated adults, unvaccinated Republicans are younger and report lower levels of educational attainment than their vaccinated counterparts. Larger shares of unvaccinated Republicans identify as conservative (68% v. 58%) and live in counties where former President Trump received more votes during the 2020 election (65% v. 52%), although this difference is not dramatic.³ Another geographic characteristic – urbanicity –  distinguishes the two groups, with 27% of unvaccinated Republicans living in rural areas compared to 16% of vaccinated Republicans (similar to the urban-rural divide found in the overall vaccination rates).  (our emphasis)

Just guessing that they're also disproportionately fundamentalists.  Because, as it says in Philippians 2:4, "Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others" "Always look out for Number 1! You da man!  Screw your neighbors!  Praise Lord Trump."

... An overwhelming majority of unvaccinated Republicans (96%) and a somewhat smaller but still substantial majority of vaccinated Republicans (73%) say getting vaccinated against COVID-19 is a personal choice, while a large majority of vaccinated Democrats (81%) see it as everyone’s responsibility to protect the health of others. And while vaccinated Republicans are about twice as likely as unvaccinated Republicans to worry that they will personally get sick from COVID-19 (25% vs. 11%), the share that is worried is still substantially less than it is among vaccinated Democrats (46%).

So, as we've seen demonstrated over and over for decades, and unlike the Biden Administration and the vast majority of Democrats, huge majorities of these Republicans -- vaccinated and unvaccinated -- don't give a hot damn about protecting others.  Here, it's all about "personal choice" (except when it comes to a woman's reproductive rights!!), running up the death count, and drawing out the pandemic (at their expense) in order to run political ads and go on cable to yap about how Biden didn't end the pandemic. 

If there's a worse collection of amoral shitwads on Earth, we'd like to know.

(h/t MockPaperScissors) 

BONUS:  

 

The midterms are going to be decided by swing voters who can’t or won’t figure out for themselves that the GOP is knowingly killing GOP voters for the purpose of prolonging the pandemic in order to blame the damage done on the Democrats. Today's post.https://t.co/S0qHaYznEB

— *The* Editorial Board (@johnastoehr) December 8, 2021

 

(Photo: The culprits / David McNew, AFP via Getty Images)

Thoughts And Prayers Fail To Save Anti-Vax Talibangelist

 

Something something reaping what you sow:

Marcus Lamb, the prominent televangelist who ran the Daystar television network in Colleyville and who promoted anti-vaccine sentiments, has died after getting COVID-19.

Lamb, 64, died Tuesday morning, according to Daystar officials.

"It's with a heavy heart we announce that Marcus Lamb, president and founder of Daystar Television Network, went home to be with the Lord this morning," Daystar posted on Twitter. "The family asks that their privacy be respected as they grieve this difficult loss."

Daystar officials did not say how Lamb died, but his son, Jonathan, said on a Daystar program on Nov. 23 that his father was battling COVID-19.

Jonathan Lamb called his father's bout with COVID-19 "a spiritual attack from the enemy," according to the Religion News Service.

“As much as my parents have gone on here to kind of inform everyone about everything going on to the pandemic and some of the ways to treat COVID — there’s no doubt that the enemy is not happy about that," Jonathan Lamb said. "And he’s doing everything he can to take down my Dad.”

Marcus Lamb launched Daystar in 1997, and the network moved into a 90,000-square-foot center of Texas 121 in Bedford in 2003. The network operates more than 70 television stations across United States, and has also expanded to an international audience in 74 countries.

During the pandemic, Lamb hosted a series of vaccine skeptics on Daystar, including Robert Kennedy Jr., Sherri Tenpenny and Del Bigtree, according to Religion News Service.

Lamb was also an advocate for alternative COVID-19 treatments, and some of his guests on Daystar promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine.

The "enemy" son Jonathan mentions?   Ignorance?  Vaccine skepticism? Malignant Loser cult worship? Religious fanaticism?  

Or.... the debbil!?

Regrets, They've Had A Few (Cont.)

Another poor decision with a bad outcome:

A small-town Alabama police chief who died of COVID-19 loved the community he served and regretted his decision against getting vaccinated, his widow said.

Buddy Crabtree, a 10-year veteran of the Ider Police Department in northeastern Alabama, died Saturday of the illness caused by the new coronavirus, news outlets reported. He was often seen inside schools in the town of about 650 people. [snip]

Crabtree’s battle with Covid-19 was a surprise to many since he seemed healthy and kept busy. Crabtree said her husband went to Highlands Medical Center in Scottsboro on Oct. 9 and was flown to Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee, 10 days later.

She said her husband said he would’ve got a vaccine, which health officials say prevents nearly all serious cases of COVID-19 and deaths, if he knew how hard he would have to fight to live.  [snip]

“He actually said, ‘If I get better, I’ll take all three, I don’t ever want to go through this again,’” she said.

What does it take for people who would otherwise have been vaccinated against the flu, mmr, chickenpox, shingles, etc., etc., to get the safe, effective COVID vaccine?  Crabtree was 65;  85.4% of the population 65 and older has been fully vaccinated.  At this point, it's simply a wilful disregard for your safety and that of the people around you -- and for what??

Get. The. Damn. Vaccine.

Halloween Yard Displays Mock Anti-Vaxxers

Choice Halloween yard displays (more at C&L).

(click on images to enlarge)

Republican Death Panels

The bullshit Obamacare "death panels" have been replaced by real, Republican death panels in several states ($$):

There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital.

It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients. Doctors now had a choice to make: Several more patients at the hospital, most of them with Covid-19, were in line to take that last I.C.U. spot. But there was also someone from one of the state’s isolated rural communities who needed to be flown in for emergency surgery.

Who should get the final bed?

Dr. ​​Steven Floerchinger gathered with his colleagues for an agonizing discussion. They had a better chance of saving one of the patients in the emergency room, they determined. The other person would have to wait.

That patient died.

“This is gut-wrenching, and I never thought I’d see it,” said Dr. ​​Floerchinger, who has been in practice for 30 years. “We are taxed to a point of making decisions of who will and who will not live.”

Other Republican- run states have been in the same situation, thanks to their sociopathic political leaders following cues from the malignant loser and his media enablers:

The states with the worst outbreaks in confirmed cases per capita right now — Tennessee, Kentucky, Alaska, Wyoming, and West Virginia, according to the New York Times’s tracker — have either set new hospitalization records in the last several weeks or are near their previous highs from the winter wave. All of them have vaccination rates below the national average. Throughout the South, hospitals are reporting they have more patients in need of ICU care than ICU beds available, as the Times reported on Tuesday.

America, the richest country in the world, is not supposed to be a place where patients are left at the door to die. Yet that is exactly what’s happening now — 18 months into the pandemic. [snip]

In Bellville, Texas, 46-year-old military veteran Daniel Wilkinson was rushed to the emergency room. He was diagnosed with gallstone pancreatitis, which is treatable but which his local hospital was not equipped to treat, according to KPRC. The doctor called all over the region — to hospitals in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, among others — but could not find a hospital that would take him. Those states currently have some of the highest Covid-19 hospitalization rates in the country.

An ICU bed was eventually located at a Houston Veterans Administration hospital, more than an hour away from Bellville. But Wilkinson’s organs started failing on the helicopter ride there and he died. It had been more than seven hours since his mother first brought him to the local ER.

All of which could have been avoided if the spineless Republican politicians in these states and nationally were more concerned about the health and well- being of their base than they were about appeasing their sub- moronic party leader and, thus, maintain their power.

It's being reported that COVID cases and hospitalizations are finally dropping, due to increased vaccination rates (including vaccine mandates by major employers) and continued mitigation efforts like mask wearing and social distancing.  We may get out of this deadly cycle, no thanks to the un- vaccinated -- the paranoid, the loons, the lib- owners, etc., and those who've led them to the Republican death panels.

 

Take It Outside, Jair

When Brazil's fascistic version of Trump came to New York City for the UN General Assembly meeting, he didn't count on New Yorkers standing up to his covidiocy. President Jair Bolsonaro headed into a pizza restaurant, which like all establishments there, requires proof of vaccination for at least one COVID shot to sit inside. A maskless Bolsonaro, who defiantly refuses to be vaccinated, and his crew were told to eat outside which they did.

The Brazilian thug had boasted last week that he would ignore the city's rules, but then, he's not used to dealing with New Yorkers who don't take bolsonaro from anybody.

(photo: Bolsonaro, in tan shirt, trying to figure out how to eat pizza)

Who's Paying The Hospital Bills For Covidiots? Take A Guess

 

The Kaiser Family Foundation tells us that over 280,000 COVID hospitalizations between June and August of this year were preventable by vaccination.  They estimate the cost of those hospitalizations was over $5 billion. But, hey, don't worry! Their costs are largely going to be paid by us vaccinated folks:

While real-time data on the cost of all COVID-19 hospitalizations are not publicly available, various sources point to an average hospitalization cost of around $20,000. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reports that Medicare fee-for-service COVID-19 hospitalizations average $24,033. Another study of Medicare fee-for-service enrollees found an average COVID-19 hospitalization cost $21,752. A FAIR Health Similarly, our analysis of pre-pandemic private insurance claims for pneumonia hospitalizations with complications averaged $20,292 (though the cost for hospitalizations requiring a ventilator are much higher).

Our analysis of HHS and CDC data indicates there were 32,000 preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations in June, 68,000 preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations in July, and another 187,000 preventable COVID-19 hospitalizations among unvaccinated adults in the U.S. in August, for a total of 287,000 across the three months...

If each of these preventable hospitalizations cost roughly $20,000, on average, that would mean these largely avoidable hospitalizations have already cost billions of dollars since the beginning of June.

They conclude:

The monetary cost of treating unvaccinated people for COVID-19 is borne not only by patients but also by society more broadly, including taxpayer-funded public programs and private insurance premiums paid by workers, businesses, and individual purchasers.

Only a small share of the cost of a COVID-19 hospitalization is paid directly by patients themselves. In our analysis of privately insured patients hospitalized with pneumonia, the typical out-of-pocket payment was about $1,300. Out-of-pocket costs may be higher for people based on their health insurance plan and how the COVID-19 hospitalization costs are billed. That is a significant amount for most patients to pay, but it is far less than the amount covered by public and private insurance coverage.

Kaiser doesn't have data on how many of the hospitalized unvaccinated have grievances about "society's freeloaders," socialist healthcare, gubment spending, not being entitled to an ICU bed when they goddamn need it, the stolen 2020 election, invasions of brown people, critical race theory, etc., but we'd bet a Venn diagram would show significant overlap.  That just makes this preventable misery all the more infuriating.

"Another One Bites The Dust"

 

The bells continue to toll for the "pro-pandemic pastors":

Bob Enyart, a notoriously homophobic right-wing radio host who refused to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, has died of COVID-19.  [snip]

As Denver’s Westword noted: “He would gleefully read obituaries of AIDS sufferers while cranking ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ by Queen, whose lead singer, Freddie Mercury, succumbed to the malady.” 

Enyart’s wife, Cheryl, is also sick with what his website calls “severe Covid 19 conditions.” 

Both refused the coronavirus shot to protest the use of aborted fetal cells, collected many years ago, in vaccine research and urged others to “boycott” the shot for the same reason.

Enyart, who is also pastor of Denver Bible Church, opposed mask mandates and called those who impose them “mask nazis” and “mask-mandating control-freak bureaucrats.” He won a lawsuit last autumn against mask mandates and crowd restrictions. 

A number of right-wing radio personalities who opposed the vaccine have died recently due to the coronavirus, including Marc Bernier, a Florida radio host who dubbed himself Mr. Anti-Vax, and Phil Valentine, who refused the vaccine but issued a deathbed plea for others to get the shot.  (our emphasis)

He was 62 and won't be missed.

(Image:  He was sick, all right/ via @PPantsdown)

Alabama Covidiots Kill Heart Patient

Hospitals in states populated with "freedumb" loving Covidiots who wind up in intensive care units (ICUs) are having to turn away other, vaccinated patients with life threatening conditions. More than 10 states are experiencing crisis conditions as their hospital facilities are filled with unvaccinated COVID patients.

The tragic case of a critically ill heart patient in Alabama illustrates the impact that unvaccinated COVID patients are having on health care providers: 

"When Ray DeMonia was having a cardiac emergency last month, his Alabama family waited anxiously for a nearby hospital with available space in its intensive care unit.

But in a state where coronavirus infections and unvaccinated patients have overwhelmed hospitals in recent months, finding an available ICU bed was an ordeal. It was so difficult, his family wrote this month, that the hospital in his hometown of Cullman, Ala., contacted 43 others in three states — and all were unable to give him the care he needed.

DeMonia, who was eventually transferred to a Mississippi hospital about 200 miles away, died at 73 on Sept. 1 — three days shy of his birthday."

Only 40% of Alabamians are fully vaccinated, making it among the worst, even among Trumpian red states whose residents have made vaccinations, mask-wearing and other health measures a political cudgel against the Biden Administration. They saw that the former guy's deadly mismanagement and demagoguery of the virus was a major reason in his defeat, and would like to do the same to the Biden Administration, even at the cost of family members.

There's been some discussion of giving unvaccinated COVID patients lower priority over patients like Mr. DeMonia. While that's unlikely to happen on a large scale, it demonstrates the frustration in dealing with Covidiots who seem to have their near death epiphany -- if at all -- intubated on a ventilator, when a safe and free vaccine could have saved them and people like Mr. DeMonia.

(photo: Getty Images)

Monday Reading

 

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.

Professor Lawrence Tribe outlines several actions the Attorney General could take to counter the Texas anti- abortion law, among them:

The attorney general should announce, as swiftly as possible, that he will use federal law to the extent possible to deter and prevent bounty hunters from employing the Texas law. If Texas wants to empower private vigilantes to intimidate abortion providers from serving women, why not make bounty hunters think twice before engaging in that intimidation?

For example, Section 242 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime for those who, “under color of law,” willfully deprive individuals “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”

This statute — originally designed to go after the Ku Klux Klan — fits the Texas situation perfectly: The bounty seekers, entitled under the Texas law to collect penalties of at least $10,000, have been made, in effect, private attorneys general of Texas. They act “under color of state law,” and unless and until Roe v. Wade is overruled, they unmistakably intend to prevent the exercise of a constitutional right.

In addition, Section 241 of the federal criminal code makes it an even more serious crime for “two or more persons” to agree to “oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.” This crime may be committed even by individuals not found to be acting “under color of law” but as purely private vigilantes, as long as they’re acting in concert with others.

Get moving, AG Garland!

James Downie sends a message to elected Democrats:

In short, one party has maximized the power it does have, and is still aiming so high that even the “compromise” version is still a major win. The other has fiddled away its years in power, yet once again is settling for less than half a loaf. This is not a recent phenomenon. The very foundation for Republicans’ looming “success” on abortion is that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — both as majority and minority leader — has squeezed Democrats repeatedly on the judiciary, culminating in the theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016. While the Manchins of the world whine about decency and decorum, McConnell and company played hardball — and won.

To be sure, Democrats’ current caution might make some sense if Republicans’ priorities were more popular. But the opposite is true. The new Washington Post-ABC poll, for example, found Americans support the reconciliation package by 53 to 41 percent, with an similarly wide gap of 13 percent among independents and a 32 percent gap among self-identified moderates. By contrast, an AP poll found that almost 60 percent believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And yet, maddeningly, Democrats act like they’re the ones on the back foot with the public.

The conventional wisdom in Washington is that voters reward action and punish parties that stray too far from the middle. The first part is true, but as the past decade has shown, the latter is misleading at best. Republicans certainly haven’t paid any price for taking the Supreme Court from delicately balanced to decidedly conservative, nor for making the county’s tax system as unequal as possible. And when Democrats have faced rebuke at the polls, they’ve been hurt more by blunting the effectiveness of their best ideas — the stimulus, the ACA, etc. — rather than doubling down on them.

Stop fretting, Democrats, and use the power you have.

We're proud to be members of the only party supporting democracy in America, but damn, it's  so frustrating, too.

Ed Kilgore has constructed a historical timeline tracing the roots of the January 6 insurrection and the malignant loser's long campaign to stay in office. Here's his intro:

The House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol Riot and the various media ticktocks explaining what Donald Trump and his allies were doing in the days immediately leading up to it are casting new light on an important threat to American democracy. But the intense focus on a few wild days in Washington can be misleading as well. Trump’s campaign to steal the 2020 presidential election began shortly after the 2016 election, and arguably the moment of peak peril for Joe Biden’s inauguration had already passed by the time Trump addressed the Stop the Steal rally on January 6.

A full timeline of the attempted insurrection is helpful in putting Trump’s frantic, last-minute schemes into the proper context and countering the false impression that January 6 was an improvised, impossible-to-replicate event, rather than one part of an ongoing campaign. If Congress fails to seize its brief opportunity to reform our electoral system, the danger could recur in future elections — perhaps with a different, catastrophic outcome.

We have confidence that the select committee will provide a rigorous examination of the machinations of the malignant loser and his Christo-fascist toadies in Congress who attempted to overthrow the results of the election -- and are still at it.  Stay tuned.

E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about how "freedom" is a purpose of organized labor:

Lane Windham, the author of “Knocking on Labor’s Door,” a history of labor organizing in the 1970s, says that’s precisely the point of the union movement: Without countervailing power to the authority of employers, workers have remarkably few, if any, rights in their workplaces.

In an interview, she argued that in the coming debate over President Biden’s Build Back Better program, one focus of the conversation should be on how assisting workers by providing government help for child care and elder care advances “the freedom that comes from security and peace of mind.”

“We continue to rely on women who are in the workplace to take on the task of unpaid child care,” she said. “They need that infrastructure, they need that support, if we want them to work in the economy. We’ve been patching it together for 40 years.”

One of the contributions of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign was his insistence that progressives must no longer cede to the political right rhetorical control over the word and the idea of “freedom.” Noting the role legal recognition of same-sex marriage played in his life as a gay man, he argued that “the chance to live a life of your choosing” is “freedom in its richest sense.”

His point applies to the world of work as well. Labor Day honors the struggles of American workers to live lives of their own choosing with a degree of prosperity and security. No less than July 4, this September day is a celebration of freedom.

Balloon Juice's Mistermix counters the "don't make fun of the covidiots" argument made by people like writer Elizabeth Bruenig:

I see variants of Bruenig’s “stop making fun” argument all the time. The issue is that many of the vaccine “hesitant” don’t want rational colloquy — they want engagement with their stupidity, so they can trot out their dumb Facebook-inspired ideas. They are thirsty for attention, not for a free, easily obtainable vaccine.

In contrast to Bruenig’s unicorn and rainbows outlook on humanity, let me share two vaccine success stories. One is from a young man that I know who has two elderly grandparents who weren’t vaccinated. They live in NYC. What got them to get their first shots a couple of days ago was the new requirement that you must be vaccinated to dine indoors. There wasn’t a rational conversation. To be fair, these people weren’t nutty Trumpers — in fact, they’re very sweet people. Still, their kids and grandkids trotted out all the usual arguments, and the only thing that moved them was inability to get dinner in places they liked to visit.

So, that’s one approach. Another was related in a comment on the Herman Cain subreddit that I can’t find right now. The gist of it was that a woman was concerned about her friend, an unvaccinated single mom with 5 kids. She began sending her friend instructions on how to claim the burial reimbursement for death from COVID, instructions on how to apply for life insurance, and other useful advice for the vaccine “hesitant”. Her friend texted her a picture of her vaccine card shortly thereafter.

Unlike scaring your friends with almost-certain death, vaccine mandates are scalable. I also think that vaccine mandates and proof of vaccination to travel will work with a good number of these stubborn assholes, no matter how loudly they squeal. Unfortunately, the combination of their loud noisemaking, the unfairness of making essential workers enforce these mandates, and the fact that a lot of the loudest anti-vaxxers are cops who won’t enforce the mandate has slowed us down.

To which we offer a secular "amen."

Finally, you're encouraged to visit Infidel 753's link round-up for a comprehensive digest of links to posts of interest from around the Internet.  He also posts stimulating essays on a variety of topics, so maybe you should bookmark his blog if you haven't already done so?

Cop Killer

 

So, who or what would you guess is the leading cause of police deaths, 2020-21?  Antifa?  Black Lives Matter?  Critical Race Theory?  Nope:

COVID is the #1 killer of LEOs in 2020 and 2021 with more than 300 confirmed/presumed cases, and 170+ under review. Please get vaccinated. Share in roll call and on your dept's social media @ODMP pic.twitter.com/g8iRsNwbto

— ODMP.org (@ODMP) August 31, 2021

 

Why, then, are there so many jamokes like these resisting something that could save their members' lives and the lives of those in the communities they're ostensibly there to "protect and serve":

Hours after the Food and Drug Administration fully approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot made an emphatic declaration: "City employees are absolutely going to be required to be vaccinated." [snip]

The same day, John Catanzara, the president of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police, which represents the city's rank-and-file officers, made it clear that he did not intend to comply.

"It cannot be mandated," he told the Chicago Sun Times. "It's that simple." [Ed.: correction, you're that simple.]

"Our members don't want to be mandated to do anything like that," said Catanzara, who did not return multiple phone and email requests for an interview this week.

The battle brewing in Chicago is playing out in cities and towns across the country. Police unions in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Seattle; and Syracuse, New York, have pushed back against vaccination requirements, as has the union representing state police in Massachusetts.

You would think a police union would be interested in the well- being of their members, and you would be right -- if it meant a blue wall of denial that any police officer ever did anything wrong, illegal or even slightly untoward.  But, when it comes to toeing the right- wing Republican line, all bets are off, because many of these police unions/ associations are effectively Republican front organizations. It's easy to imagine that, had the call for mandating vaccinations for police and other public sector employees been issued by a Republican, those same unions would see it as their patriotic duty to have their members get the shot.  But, you can't do anything that might redound to the benefit of a Democrat, even if it means 300- plus of your members die just to own the libs!

Protecting and serving (Republicans)!

January 6 Rioters' Lawyer, Dying With COVID, Quits

 

John Pierce, a rabid Trumpist lawyer representing several January 6 Capitol insurrectionists, has also been a raging opponent of mask mandates and other health safety measures to curb the virus. According to a notice provided to the Court, he's now unable to represent them because he contracted COVID-19 and is unresponsive and on a ventilator (click to enlarge this excerpt from the filing):

Pierce tweeted just weeks ago that the 82nd Airborne couldn't get him to get a vaccine. Of course, fanaticism and stupidity are impervious to even force. He also represented right-wing street brownshirt Kyle Rittenhouse, before he was fired, so he's been mixed up in numerous causes on the extreme right.

The downside is that this will delay justice for the rioters that Pierce represented for a few weeks until new legal representation can be secured and brought up to speed.

(photo: Pierce, unvaxxed, unmasked, undone. Screenshot)