Thursday, June 24, 2021

Dictatorship and Democracy

It is possible that a dictatorship is a more efficient way to run a country. You put one guy in charge, he gives orders, and everybody does what he says. There is no red tape, no endless discussions about alternatives or what is "fair" or environmentally friendly or any of that. People who resist or complain can disappear, no problem. There is no point in listening to them or arguing with them.

When you hear Joe Biden talk about democracy, he often looks at it in terms of efficiency, his question is the practical one of whether a democratic government can be competitive, and that is his goal. The idea of the people governing themselves sounds inherently better, but if it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

The Republicans don't think that a democracy can work, so when they get in power they make sure it doesn't work. We just had Republican control of the executive and legislative branches of federal government, they filled the judicial branch with their unqualified judges, and the result was inefficiency, greed and corruption, nepotism and cronyism, breakdown of public services, a freakin' plague fer cryin' out loud. Of course it's possible that a competent strong-man would have done a better job, but unfortunately this is how it works. The kind of people who prefer an autocratic leader want an authoritarian, not an expert. You get a tough guy who doesn't know what he's doing.

Democracy draws its power from the full breadth of the population. Some businessman or professor might have the perfect solutions to society's problems, but we don't just run out and adopt those, we put them before the people. And that means every idiot in the country gets to have an opinion, and they can vote against ideas that they are incapable of understanding. Also, they might have a weird but good idea that nobody else thought of. You might think you know more than the next person, and you might, but his vote cancels yours. It is a terrible process, and also the best.

Some countries have violent revolutions, where some subset of the population thinks they know so much more than the others that they are justified in taking over. In our country that is white people, at least those white people who think white people are special and better than everybody else. They have tried to overthrow democracy a couple of times, and certainly will again, but it's going to be pretty tough to do it that way. You take over a Capitol building, execute a couple dozen politicians, smear your poop on the walls, then what? You still gotta run things, and that's hard.

The sly way for white people -- white supremacists, actually; most white people do not want a revolution -- to take over is to modify the voting process. That way they don't have to come out against democracy, they can claim to support the right of the people to determine their own fate -- they just make sure that their own people are more likely to vote, and that everybody else will have a harder time.

In our present time there is a two-prong attack on democracy. For one, the white supremacists are saying that the last presidential election election was rigged, that the other side cheated. This is called the Big Lie, in reference to a technique promoted by Adolph Hitler, you tell a lie so big that nobody can argue with it. So for instance, on the night that he lost the election, Trump tweeted: "I WON THE ELECTION!" This was so obviously false that you could not refute it with facts. All you can say is, "No, you didn't," then you're out of arguments. And now, half a year later, most Republicans still believe it. That is one Big Honkin' Lie.

While the Big Lie revises the past, the other prong of the attack is future-leaning, with white supremacists changing the rules of democracy, making it easier for "their people" to vote, changing the voting districts and locations and definitions and rules and methods. Between these two kinds of attack, white supremacists can claim to support democracy while making sure it doesn't work. One person equals one vote, that's a pretty straightforward principle, but if one of the people can't get to the polls, or can't get the necessary ID, or their signature is ruled to look "different" from the official one, then that one person equals zero votes.

There was a big foo-foo in Michigan this year, where white supremacists alleged that a number of voting irregularities led to Biden winning the state. So a Republican-led state commission went through all the evidence, listened to many hours of testimony, brought in experts. Yesterday they issued their finding: Michigan Republicans eviscerate Trump voter fraud claims in scathing report. They found two examples of dead people voting: "one was a clerical error while the other was a timing issue." That's it. A timing issue, I love that: huh, he wasn't dead when he voted, but it looks like he is now. That's a timing issue, all right.

The foundation of democracy is that the minority has to accept things they don't like. Those other idiots can outvote you, just because there are more of them. But in an autocracy it's the majority of people who have to accept things they don't like. White supremacists might think they are right about everything but they are a minority in this country, and if they succeed at revolution, either by violence or by degrading the voting process, the government will run badly for most people. Now, it might be that they don't care about "most people" as much as they care about themselves: that's the real problem.

150 Comments:

Anonymous Obama abused the IRS to win the election in 2012, and tried to use the FBI in 2016 to attack an opponent - sleaziest Prez ever said...

"That way they don't have to come out against democracy, they can claim to support the right of the people to determine their own fate -- they just make sure that their own people are more likely to vote, and that everybody else will have a harder time."

in your logic, we never had real democracy until 2020

the laws that will ensure voting integrity will simply be going back to how we operated before Dems used the pandemic as an excuse to obliterate voting integrity

there is no way to tell how legitimate the vote is because all voting integrity laws were abolished

you've yet to explain how these laws make it easy for the minority fringe white supremacist groups to vote and harder for everyone else

it's kind of racist to assume that minorities can only vote if they are mailed a ballot without showing any idea, have someone fill it out for them, and then take it to a drop-off ballot box for them

your racist idea is wrong, minorities are just as capable of adhering to voter ID laws as whites are

as for dictatorship, the Dems now have the social media censoring speech

they accomplished this by threatening to regulate them if they didn't

until recently, if you posted that the Chinese accidentally released the virus, your post was taken down

TTF has been part of a movement to politicize and abuse science

this led to the dismal performance of science in the pandemic

oh, they developed the virus in record time

but they also created the virus

and then lied to us about it

the US scientists did that as much as the Chinese scientists did

the one lesson that science never learns is that just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should

June 24, 2021 10:28 PM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...

remember when the GOP fought to defend slavery, created the KKK, stood in the doorway at Little Rock, passed a crime bill that incarcerated a generation of young black men, and opposed blacks having the right to pull their kids out of ailing inner city schools?

oh, that's right

that was the Democrats

The blasé response to the revelation that Rhode Island Democratic Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse belonged to a private “whites only” club and even owned a stake in it, should come as no surprise. In the Democrats’ race-obsessed world, only Republicans are racist.

Whitehouse confused the issue last week when asked about his membership in Bailey’s Beach Club and its alleged all-white membership, saying: “I think the people who are running the place are still working on that and I’m sorry it hasn’t happened yet.”

Well, it turns out, his family is among the “people who are running the place.”

Both Whitehouse and his wife Sandra as well as their families have been members of the club for decades. Whitehouse did transfer his (ownership) shares in the club to his wife years ago, and she is now one of the largest shareholders in the all-white club. The club’s membership is a who’s who Newport, Palm Beach, and New York wealth.

And on Monday, Whitehouse appeared to defend his membership, calling such clubs “a long tradition in Rhode Island.”

If Whitehouse were a Republican would he get a pass from the Democrats? Of course not.

The reason is simple. Whitehouse, like so many Democrats, portrays himself as a staunch anti-racist, as he did recently during a Senate “moment of silence” to commemorate the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor: “We can and must do better to root out systemic racism in its many forms and meet America’s full promise of justice for all.”

Republicans in Congress are routinely accused of being racists, with evidence of their guilt never being offered. They get called racist simply for opposing Democratic proposals, even ones that have nothing to do with race. Or for telling the truth about our nation’s violent, troubled inner-cities. Or for defending America’s symbols of freedom, such as the American flag. Or for supporting Donald Trump.

But Democrats belonging to racially exclusive clubs, real racism? Pass.

That no one in his party seems to care much and Whitehouse appears secure in his position tells you a lot about the Democratic Party. Contrary to its image as a champion of downtrodden minorities, the Democratic Party is in fact racist at its core. And always has been

June 25, 2021 9:28 AM  
Anonymous Donnie's pity party said...

Top Ohio Republicans are steering clear of former President Donald Trump’s first of a planned series of political rallies that begin Saturday in a small town in Ohio.

Gov. Mike DeWine, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and Sen. Rob Portman are all skipping the event, The Columbus Dispatch and other media have reported.

DeWine, who blasted Trump after the Capitol riot for setting a “fire” that “threatened to burn down our democracy” — has cited a conflicting family commitment.

Husted and Portman haven’t offered a reason for missing out. Portman was one of the first to call for stripping House committee appointments from the controversial QAnon-conspiracy-peddling Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was endorsed by Trump.

Trump is expected to attack Republicans he considers disloyal to him at his “Save America” rally — including Rep. Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, who was one of 10 Republicans to vote for Trump’s second impeachment.

He is also expected to again pound home his “big lie” that Democrat Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election because it was rigged. Trump is expected to appear Saturday at the Lorain County Fairgrounds in Wellington, population: 6,000.

“Of course he’s going to talk about some of the Republicans he thinks stabbed him in the back, starting with [Reps.] Anthony Gonzalez in Ohio, Liz Cheney [Wyo.], Adam Kinzinger [Ill.], and the people who voted against him in the House during the impeachment,” David B. Cohen, a political scientist at the University of Akron told The Blade in a recent interview. “I think it’s mostly going to be a Donald Trump pity party.”

Trump said in a recent podcast that he picked Ohio in part to push for Gonzalez’s rival, former White House aide Max Miller, whom the former president has endorsed. Trump said in a recent podcast interview that he doesn’t believe Gonzalez “represents the people” or that he “thinks the way I do.”

Gonzalez, a former Ohio State University football star and an NFL receiver, won his district in the 2020 election by a breezy 26 percentage points and even garnered 15,000 more votes in the district than did Trump, according to The Bulwark.

Gonzalez is another top Ohio Republican who will not be attending Trump’s rally.

Trump disciple Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio will attend. Senate candidates Jane Timken, J.D. Vance and Josh Mandel — all seeking to replace Portman, who is retiring next year, and who are hoping for Trump’s endorsement — will also turn out, Forbes reported. DeWine’s primary challenger, former Rep. Jim Renacci, is also expected to be there.

June 26, 2021 8:47 AM  
Anonymous Orwellian Republicans trying to rewrite history again. Why do they hate the Constitution so much? said...

As part of his report on Mike Lindell's weekend "MAGA Frank" rally held in New Richmond, Wisconsin over the weekend, Rolling Stone's Stephen Rodrick sat down with the MyPillow CEO who predicted a massive flip in votes should he get his wish to audit every state's presidential election results.

Describing the weekend rally as "one part far-right cosplay party featuring a series of wacky and deluded characters who hold no elective office. The other part is f*cking scary, the beforementioned hucksters hold dangerous sway over a party that in the not so distant past had presidential standard bearers named Romney and McCain," Rodrick admitted Lindell invited him to visit to talk about the past election.

With Lindell taking time out from the rally's festivities to talk about his quest to see Trump rightfully installed back in the Oval Office, Rodrick notes that Lindell seemed highly "caffeinated" when they got together -- with the Donald Trump supporter jumping from topic to topic while making the case the election was stolen.

As Rodrick wrote, "The pillow salesmen was always a Trump election truther but, according to him, it was the January 9th arrival of a trove of never really explained data that convinced Lindell — if not anyone else — that his pal was getting robbed."

"Everybody brought me everything," explained Lindell, before elaborating. "I was the last hub in the wheel, the last voice for America. All I did was put in millions of dollars to validate it." Behind Lindell, Charlotte's Web plays on a screen. It's the scene where the rat scurries around collecting treasure and garbage. "I've said it before, if I knew this had happened in reverse and Trump got put in I'd still be sounding the alarm."

Continuing in that vein, Rodrick adds, "Lindell explains that it was the Chinese Communist Party that was behind the hacks. But it is never explicitly explained how in any of his videos. His latest is 'Absolute 9-0', a reference to the fact he believes the Supreme Court will unanimously reinstate Trump as president after they see his not-disclosed information."

Asked to explain, Lindell responded, "There was 147 million were registered to vote. OK, Biden got 80 million and Trump got 75 million. That's ten million extra voters" with Rodrick noting, "In fact, over 213 million American were registered to vote, Lindell was off by just a bit, aka 66 million. He then mentions that 1.7 million Pennsylvanians requested mail-in ballots while the election count shows hundreds of thousands more, proving more fraud. In reality, Pennsylvanians requested over 3 million mail-in ballots."

"Trump won 80 million to 68 million," Lindell said (a 19 million vote swing, the Rolling Stone writer helpfully added) before continuing, "Six months from now, Trump will be our real president and our country will be heading toward its greatest rebirth in history."

As for the Capitol insurrection that followed a Trump "Stop the Steal " rally, the MyPillow CEO suggested reports on it were overblown.

"What are you talking about? Number one, I've never even watched footage of that. But in my opinion it was a setup. I've been to over 50 rallies a year. There has never been one incident. And you don't think it was a setup? Gimme a break," he explained.

Ahh yes, the old "If I didn't see it, it didn't happen" excuse. Brilliant.

June 26, 2021 1:27 PM  
Anonymous Dem monopoly control of inner cities has led to poverty and racism said...

the sad thing is what you're doing is the only hope for Democrats

but, even sadder, though it's your best chance, it's slim

the country is sinking into a huge wave of violent crime

the public perceives, correctly, that it is the result of Democrats' effort to defund the police

inflation is rising

Biden's approval rating is sinking

Trump won't be back

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will compete for the nomination of the winning party

the gay agenda is over

June 27, 2021 12:53 AM  
Anonymous defund the Dems said...

rising crime and inflation aren't the only reason Biden's political future looks grim

check out this poll from Harvard:

80% think illegal immigration at the border is a crisis and 68% think Biden's statements have contributed to the problem

55% think we should return to Trump's policies on the border

61% oppose teaching critical race theory in public schools

https://news.yahoo.com/harvard-poll-80-see-border-123800465.html

so, there's rising violent crime across America, inflation picking up steam, a crisis at the border, and Dems pushing racist propaganda in public schools

and to top it all off, Biden is not exactly an inspiring figure

the mid-terms are coming

June 27, 2021 7:40 AM  
Anonymous Thank you Captain Obvious - maybe now you won't suffer Giuliani's fate said...

In an interview published Sunday, former Attorney General William Barr bashed former President Donald Trump’s efforts to spread misinformation about the 2020 election, calling Trump’s lies about voter fraud “bullshit.”

Barr, speaking to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl for The Atlantic, opened up about his final few months working under Trump, when the president pushed the Justice Department to investigate baseless allegations of election fraud in an attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s legitimate victory.

Barr said he gave DOJ the green light to investigate “substantial allegations” of voter irregularities a week after the election, and also began his own unofficial inquiry into Trump’s claims. But he found the allegations being peddled by Trump and his allies to be unfounded, he told Karl.

“My attitude was: It was put-up or shut-up time,” Barr said. “If there was evidence of fraud, I had no motive to suppress it. But my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all bullshit.”

Barr has been viewed as deeply loyal to Trump before the election, often criticizing what he called partisan attacks on the president and defending his criminal justice record. But Trump’s efforts to overturn the election appeared to shift his allegiance.

“We realized from the beginning it was just bullshit,” Barr said of Trump’s claims that voting machines nationwide were switching Trump votes to Biden votes. Lots of Democrats realized it was just more bovine excrement from the Pathological Liar in Chief too. Too bad most Republicans didn't and many of them are still pushing the "vote integrity" angle.

He told Karl that even if the machines had somehow changed the tally, the issue would be made obvious when the votes were recounted by hand.

“It’s a counting machine, and they save everything that was counted,” Barr said. “So you just reconcile the two. There had been no discrepancy reported anywhere, and I’m still not aware of any discrepancy.”

Barr resigned as attorney general in December after a bombshell interview with The Associated Press in which he publicly pushed back against Trump’s election fraud claims for the first time. Trump, Karl reported, was furious with Barr for making such a statement.

Trump’s “big lie” of a so-called stolen election fueled the deadly insurrectionist attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. There’s no evidence of any widespread fraud that would have changed the outcome of the election, though Trump has continued to claim Biden’s win was illegitimate.

June 27, 2021 4:24 PM  
Anonymous The showernuts want you to believe that "transgenders" are the biggest threat to your children said...

Texas’ highest court has ruled that Facebook can be held liable for sex trafficking carried out on its social media platforms, after several victims accused the company of knowingly benefiting from its online facilitation.

Friday’s ruling by the state’s Supreme Court allows three civil lawsuits by trafficking victims to proceed against the social media giant, after the court determined that current laws do not permit Facebook, or any other website, to act as a “lawless no-man’s-land,” the Houston Chronicle first reported.

The victims have accused Facebook of violating a state anti-trafficking law passed in 2009 ― Chapter 98 of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code ― that makes a defendant who traffics a person, or who intentionally or knowingly benefits from the act, liable to the victim.

Facebook in February requested that the court dismiss the lawsuits, which were filed by three women who said that as teenagers they were pulled into the sex trade by pimps using the company’s social media platforms.

In one of the cases reported by the Chronicle, the victim said she was 14 years old when she was contacted by a man on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook. She said the man ended up raping her and advertising her as a prostitute on Instagram. After the girl was rescued from the operation, her Instagram profile continued to be used to lure in other minors. The victim’s mother said she reported what happened to Facebook but the company never responded.

The plaintiffs accuse Facebook of “creating a breeding ground for sex traffickers to stalk and entrap survivors.” Instead of implementing safeguards that would require verification of users’ identities and being more selective with its advertising, the company is accused of choosing to increase its profit margins.

Facebook argued that Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, protects online service providers from liability for content published by its users, as well as liability for regulating it.

However, the Texas justices dismissed that blanket defense on Friday, arguing that Facebook played a role in facilitating the illicit behavior. It also noted that in 2018, Congress amended Section 230 so that civil liability could be imposed on websites that violate state and federal human trafficking laws.

“We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the Internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking,” the justices said in their majority opinion. “Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it. Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”

June 27, 2021 4:31 PM  
Anonymous The showernuts want you to believe that "transgenders" are the biggest threat to your children said...

Facebook said it is considering its next steps.

“Sex trafficking is abhorrent and not allowed on Facebook,” a spokesperson told HuffPost in a statement. “We will continue our fight against the spread of this content and the predators who engage in it.”

A lawyer for one of the victims suing Facebook said their work doesn’t stop here.

“Our clients have fought for over two years for the chance to bring their case,” attorney Annie McAdams said in a statement. “While we have a long road ahead, we are grateful that the Texas Supreme Court will allow these courageous trafficking survivors to have their day in court against Facebook. With the help of Chapter 98 protection, we believe trafficking survivors in Texas can expose and hold accountable businesses such as Facebook that benefit from these crimes of exploitation.”

Since 2013, the internet has been the most common location for human trafficking recruitment, according to a 2020 report by the Human Trafficking Institute.

More than half of all online victim recruitments in sex trafficking cases that occurred in 2020 took place on Facebook, “making it by far the most frequently referenced website or app in public sources connected with these prosecutions, which was also true in 2019,” the report found.

After Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat were the two most frequently cited social media platforms for recruiting child victims.

June 27, 2021 4:31 PM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is totalitarian said...

"Trump’s “big lie” of a so-called stolen election"

this seems to be an obsession of the media

interesting that they have no interest in the fact that two-thirds of Democrats believe Russians tampered with voting count to overturn Hillary's win in 2016

that big lie actually hurt the country by dominating its focus for three years:

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2018/03/09/russias-impact-election-seen-through-partisan-eyes

June 29, 2021 12:38 PM  
Anonymous Republicans tried to overturn US democracy and then claim "da gayz are totalitarian!" said...


"interesting that they have no interest in the fact that two-thirds of Democrats believe Russians tampered with voting count to overturn Hillary's win in 2016"

Yeah... that's probably because Democrats didn't storm Congress after Hillary won the popular vote to try and stop its certification of the electoral college.

Go figure.

The article you linked to is over 3 years old. It's not going to distract people from the fact that Rumpie and a bunch of his base believe he's going to be El Presidente again in August - and may work to make it happen - just like they did on January 6th.

There is no mechanism in the Constitution to make him President again in August. But Republicans gave up on the Constitution years ago and traded it for a red hat and a loud mouth who demands the party kiss his... ring.

Normal Americans would disavow him and made sure he didn't get anywhere near the levers of our Democracy again.

But that's just not in the nature of Republicans - they somehow believe we can still have a Democracy when they are the only ones in control.

Just like Putin's Russia.

June 29, 2021 4:01 PM  
Anonymous for millennia, society has known that two genders are necessary to make a marriage said...

"Yeah... that's probably because Democrats didn't storm Congress after Hillary won the popular vote to try and stop its certification of the electoral college.

Go figure."

sure, let's figure

Hillary hired a foreign spy to falsely accuse the President of colluding with Russians

it was actually more damaging to the country than the actions of a few hundred fringe actors on January 6

"The article you linked to is over 3 years old."

it was when the Trump presidency was new, just like Biden's is

Hillary, and, for that matter, Al Gore both lied and said they really won but the election was stolen

"It's not going to distract people from the fact that Rumpie and a bunch of his base believe he's going to be El Presidente again in August - and may work to make it happen - just like they did on January 6th."

and by "bunch" you mean?

few people believe Trump will become President in August

and no one needs to be distracted because, other than TTF, most people aren't even aware of it

"There is no mechanism in the Constitution to make him President again in August."

thanks for that brilliant observation

"But that's just not in the nature of Republicans - they somehow believe we can still have a Democracy when they are the only ones in control."

what planet are you from?

Dems actively try to suppress free speech and free press

Just like Putin's Russia.

June 30, 2021 12:22 AM  
Anonymous American carnage: What we are now learning about Trump's nightmarish mishandling of COVID said...

There are a lot of books coming out over the next few months that chronicled the final days of the Trump administration and it's pretty clear there are a lot of stories to tell. Of course, there is also a burning desire on the part of some members of Trump's entourage to buff up their severely tarnished reputations.

Michael Wolff of "Fire and Fury" fame has a new book coming out about the post-election period called "Landslide" that sounds as though it will be as lurid and gossipy as his previous Trump book. ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl's book called "Betrayal" (which I referenced in this piece about Bill Barr on Monday) appears to take a look at the same period as another new book by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Bender called "Frankly, We Did Win This Election: The Inside Story of How Trump Lost." It makes sense that there would be a number of books about the election, Trump's Big Lie and the subsequent nsurrection. The assault on democracy is the biggest political story of our time and it's still unfolding.

But I think the most serious story of the Trump administration and granted, it's hard to choose, has to be the massive, overwhelming failure to deal with the COVID pandemic that's killed over 600,000 people and counting. I still can't quite wrap my mind around that number or the fact that the leadership of the United States of America was so inept. According to yet another new book, aptly entitled "Nightmare Scenario: Inside the Trump Administration's Response to the Pandemic That Changed History," it was all actually much worse than we even thought.

The authors, Washington Post reporters Yasmeen Abutaleb and Damian Paletta, tell the coronavirus story from the perspective of the science advisers as well as the political people around Trump who were desperately trying to get him to take the problem seriously. We knew from Bob Woodward's earlier reporting that Trump had consciously made the decision to "downplay" the virus, ostensibly to keep people from panicking. Nobody really believed that, of course. It was obvious that he was "downplaying" the virus because he was afraid that the stock market would panic and that the ensuring economic turmoil would cost him the election. It seemingly never even occurred to him that mass deaths might be a bigger drag on his campaign.

The earliest unforgettable moment in the saga was the day when Trump went down to the CDC and bragged that everyone there was so impressed by his grasp of the complexities that perhaps he should have been a scientist instead of a president. And he made the comment that would guide the entire response from that point forward:

""I like the numbers being where they are. I don't need to have the numbers double because of one ship" -- Trump explains that he doesn't want to let people off the Grand Princess cruise ship because he doesn't want the number of coronavirus cases in the country to go up"

According to "Nightmare Scenario" Trump was so upset by the idea that these people would "double his numbers" that he asked his staff if there wasn't "an island we own" that we could send them to and he asked more than once about the possibility of sending them to Guantánamo. The staff finally got the idea scuttled but because they were all just as shallow and self-serving as he was, they did it not because it was grotesquely inhumane but because they were "worried about a backlash over quarantining American tourists on the same Caribbean base where the United States holds terrorism suspects." They had a point. Sending sick old people to a terrorist prison camp is pretty bad optics...

July 01, 2021 8:08 AM  
Anonymous American carnage: What we are now learning about Trump's nightmarish mishandling of COVID said...

The "numbers" continued to anger Trump. He demanded that the officials who allowed the cruise passengers into the US be fired (it didn't happen) and when he said at his infamous Tulsa Oklahoma rally back in June of 2020, "when you do testing to that extent, you're gonna find more cases. So I said to my people, slow the testing down please" — he was not joking. The book quotes Trump having a tantrum over the phone to Health and Human Services Director Alex Azar, saying "Testing is killing me! I'm going to lose the election because of testing! What idiot had the federal government do testing?" (Azar replied, hilariously, "Uh, do you mean Jared?")

This response was a trainwreck in every way, mostly because of Trump's ignorance which made his decisions erratic and ineffectual, which I suspect also led to the magical thinking that had him demanding that everyone be a cheerleader and if you just tell people that everything is fine, it will be. He's quoted as saying to his team, "I am sick and tired of how negative you all are. . . . I spend half of my day responding to what Tony Fauci has to say, and I'm the president of the United States!" He told Dr. Deborah Birx, "Every time you talk, I get depressed. You have to stop that."

Perhaps the biggest revelation in this book is the fact that Trump was much, much sicker from COVID than we knew. His doctors were seriously afraid he was going to die and pushed the FDA to break all the rules to get him the experimental drugs that might save him. As we know, they did that and pumped him full of steroids and he recovered quite quickly. But in one of the more eye-rolling moments in this story, apparently, some of the advisers like CDC Director Robert Redfield, assumed his very close brush with death would automatically force him to take the COVID protocols more seriously and go out and tell people about his own experience in order to convince them to do the same. That's just laughable. It would mean he had to admit he was wrong and that's impossible. You'll recall that he defiantly ripped off his mask when he returned to the White House and then made a video telling everyone to go out and live their lives. He promised that he was going to make those experimental drugs available for free to everyone. That didn't happen, although he did arrange for his cronies Chris Christie and Ben Carson to get them.

This book reinforces the story that we already knew which is that the death toll in the U.S. from the pandemic is so high largely because the president of the United States at the time was an incompetent narcissist who was incapable of handling the crisis. So instead he said it was all bad press and poor optics and tried to happy talk his way out of it. It ended up killing people. A lot of people. Despite his desire to be seen as the man who single-handedly created the vaccines and saved the world, his followers heard him "downplay" the virus and they believed him. Now many of them are refusing to get the shots and Trump's American carnage continues to this day.

July 01, 2021 8:08 AM  
Anonymous homosexual "marriage" is sado-masochistic said...

great news!

the Supreme Court today upheld states' rights to enact voter integrity laws

that means Dems won't able to play any monkey business in the midterm elections next year

HUZZAH!!!

July 01, 2021 11:35 AM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is totalitarian said...

that's right!

monkey business.....

July 01, 2021 1:05 PM  
Anonymous gender has consequences said...

great news!

the Supreme Court today held that donor disclosure laws are unconstitutional

that means Dems won't able to play any monkey business in the midterm elections next year

HUZZAH!!!

July 01, 2021 1:08 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"monkey business"

Nice honkey business.

July 01, 2021 2:28 PM  
Anonymous Rosanna Arquette said...



✌🏼rosanna arquette
@RoArquette
·
Jun 29

I love First Ladies that make it onto the cover of Vogue Only the BEST ones do. Congratulations Dr Jill Biden.

July 01, 2021 2:34 PM  
Anonymous the Dem Party is a Tijuana zebra said...

thanks, Rosanna, for that brilliantly substantive post!

and, to think, everyone calls you an airhead!!

Jill is doctor of creative writing and I suppose you are doctor of cosmetology

July 01, 2021 3:21 PM  
Anonymous The average date for the Atlantic’s first hurricane isn’t until mid-August. said...

Elsa became the Atlantic’s first hurricane of 2021 on Friday morning, a development that comes a month and a half ahead of schedule and foreshadows what may be another exceptionally active hurricane season.

Hurricane conditions have already overspread Barbados and parts of the Lesser Antilles. This weekend, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Cuba are next along the storm’s path.

Early next week, Elsa will approach the southeast United States, bringing the potential for heavy rain and flooding, along with a secondary concern for strong winds and a storm surge, or rise in ocean water above normally dry land.

Florida could first be affected by the storm early next week, but “forecast uncertainty remains larger than usual due to Elsa’s potential interaction with the Greater Antilles this weekend,” the National Hurricane Center wrote. “Interests in Florida should monitor Elsa’s progress and updates to the forecast.”

The official Hurricane Center forecast brings Elsa into the vicinity of the Florida peninsula Tuesday as a high-end tropical storm (with 65 mph winds), but this track and intensity projection could change.

Since part of Champlain Towers South condo in Surfside, Fla., collapsed more than a week ago, stormy conditions have already slowed rescue efforts and tropical storm or hurricane conditions could pose another major setback.

July 02, 2021 12:40 PM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...

not in Florida

The difference between a hurricane and a tropical storm is that the winds of a hurricane are stronger. To be considered a hurricane, a storm's winds must reach 74 mph, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If a storm's winds are between 39 mph and 73 mph, it is considered a tropical storm.

why does a blog call itself "teach the facts" and then lie?

why don't you just call yourself SYHTSTT?

sometimes you have to stretch the truth

July 02, 2021 2:44 PM  
Anonymous pass the popcorn, the Dem demo on how to lose an election is just beginning said...

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE FROM THE GAY AGENDA DAY!!!!!!!!!!!

July 04, 2021 6:44 AM  
Anonymous Same-sex marriage remains legal nationwide. See Obergefell v. Hodges decision said...

"The difference between a hurricane and a tropical storm is that the winds of a hurricane are stronger. To be considered a hurricane, a storm's winds must reach 74 mph, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. If a storm's winds are between 39 mph and 73 mph, it is considered a tropical storm"

You can take your complaint to the Capitol Weather Gang who said Elsa was "a high-end tropical storm (with 65 mph winds)," that might change, since you seem to believe you they don't know what they're talking about.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/07/02/hurricane-elsa-florida-united-states/

July 04, 2021 6:42 PM  
Anonymous I wonder if there is any part of the Constitution that TTFers feel they can live with... said...

why does a blog call itself "teach the facts" and then lie?

why don't you just call yourself SYHTSTT?

sometimes you have to stretch the truth

July 05, 2021 6:46 AM  
Anonymous Vaccine hesitant are in 'death lottery,' W.Va. governor says said...

As the country marks its 245th Independence Day, the Biden administration has officially missed its target of getting 70% of all adults at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine. And as state governments examine what went wrong with their vaccine rollout programs, a culprit is clear: the younger population is significantly less likely to be vaccinated.

"At the end of the day, the young people -- we're having a hard time getting them across the finish line and getting them vaccinated," West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice told ABC "This Week" Co-anchor Martha Raddatz.

"They're young people all across this country that are not getting vaccinated," Justice added. "It's a challenge. That's all there is to it."

Nationally, 67% of all adults have received one dose, but only 56.1% of adults in West Virginia have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine -- a surprise from a state that was lauded months ago as being one of the leaders in the U.S. on vaccine distribution.

When that statistic is broken down by age group, the vaccination rate plummets in younger generations. While more than 78% of the U.S. population over the age of 65 is vaccinated in the United States, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only 39.5% of 18- to 24-year-olds are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

"Let's go back to who's not getting vaccinated," Raddatz said. "The statistics will show it's poverty, race and you just look at the map -- it's a lot of red states."

"Well, I mean, there's some truth to that and everything," Justice responded. "Because, you know, the red states probably have a lot of people that, you know, are very, very conservative in their thinking. And they think, 'Well, I don't have to do that.' But they're not thinking right."

"Do you really think those people who aren't vaccinated -- who as you said may be more conservative, may not want anybody in their business -- are really ever going to get vaccinated?" Raddatz asked. "What could actually put them over the edge to want it at this point?"

"Well, Martha, I hate to say this, is what would put them over the edge, is an awful lot of people die," Justice responded. "The only way that's going to happen is a catastrophe that none of us want."

July 05, 2021 8:22 AM  
Anonymous Why doesn't Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis believe in the Constitution? said...

A judge has blocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' anti "deplatforming" bill, one day before it was due to come into force.

The bill, which DeSantis signed in May, was designed to stop social-media companies from "willfully deplatforming" political candidates in Florida by suspending them.

US District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking enforcement of the bill.

If passed into law, the bill would allow Florida to fine companies $250,000 a day, and private citizens could seek damages of $100,000.

Hinkle said the bill violated social media companies' First Amendment rights.

"The legislation compels providers to host speech that violates their standards — speech they otherwise would not host — and forbids providers from speaking as they otherwise would," the injunction stated.

"The legislation now at issue was an effort to rein in social-media providers deemed too large and too liberal. Balancing the exchange of ideas among private speakers is not a legitimate governmental interest," the injunction added.

Hinkle also picked up on a loophole in the bill exempting companies which also own theme parks in Florida, saying the exclusion deserved "strict scrutiny."

The injunction was the result of a lawsuit filed by two Big Tech lobbying groups whose members include Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, and Google.

Legal experts told Wired in May DeSantis' bill was legally untenable.

"This is so obviously unconstitutional, you wouldn't even put it on an exam," Miami University law professor A. Michael Froomkin told Wired.

July 05, 2021 8:45 AM  
Anonymous At this point, if you believe right-wing media, you're CHOOSING to be an idiot said...

A former Fox News insider laments what the conservative network has become.

Veteran media executive Preston Padden had high praise for his former boss Rupert Murdoch in a new column for The Daily Beast, but he said the Fox News mogul had wrecked whatever legacy he may have deserved for his business success by allowing the network to drift into malignant misinformation.

"In recent years things have gone badly off the tracks at Fox News," Padden writes.

Padden blamed the network's broadcasters for the deaths of many Americans from coronavirus and the Jan. 6 insurrection with their continued lies about pandemic safety measures and Donald Trump's election loss, and he said the damage done to the United States was incalculable.

"Fox News has caused many millions of Americans — most of them Republicans (as my wife and I were for 50 years) — to believe things that simply are not true," he writes. "For example, Yahoo News reports that 73 percent of Republicans blame 'left-wing protesters' for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Of course, that is ludicrous. All one has to do is look at the pictures or videos of the attack to see that the violent mob was comprised of Trump supporters."

Fox personalities create divisions in our society by stoking racial animus and fueling the totally false impression that Black Lives Matter and Antifa are engaged in nightly, life-threatening riots across the country.

Another poll found two-thirds of Republicans believe Trump's lies about the election being stolen from him.

"This ridiculous notion has been thoroughly refuted," Padden writes. "But millions of Americans believe these falsehoods because they have been drilled into their minds, night after night, by Fox News."

Padden said he doesn't believe those falsehoods about Trump's loss and the pandemic reflect Murdoch's views, and he claimed he's tried to make the elderly mogul try to understand the harm his network is inflicting.

"Over the past nine months I have tried, with increasing bluntness, to get Rupert to understand the real damage that Fox News is doing to America," Padden writes. "I failed, and it was arrogant and naïve to ever have thought that I could succeed. I am at a loss to understand why he will not change course. I can only guess that the destructive editorial policy of Fox News is driven by a deep-seated vein of anti-establishment/contrarian thinking in Rupert that, at age 90, is not going to change."

July 05, 2021 9:38 AM  
Anonymous Don't hold your breath Susan, the wackos stick around far longer than you ever think they can said...

A Republican strategist is speaking out against the rise of the extreme right inside her own party.

“I’ve been looking for a new word for ‘Trumpism’ because I hate it,” Susan Del Percio told MSNBC’s Joy Reid. “I think it goes deeper than just Donald Trump within the Republican Party.”

She said there’s one word she keeps coming back to.

“It’s neofascism,” she declared. “Forget Trumpism. It’s neofascism. That’s what the grassroots of the party looks like right now.”

Del Percio was asked specifically about former Rep. Allen West (R-Tex.), a far-right figure in the party who said he will challenge Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in the primary next year.

“He may win,” she said. “And if he wins, he will be a very weak challenger to whoever the Democrats put up.”

Del Percio noted that other far-right extremists are running in other races throughout the country.

“The wackiest wackies are gonna win the Republican primary, but they’re going to lose in general elections,” she said, and eventually the GOP will get the message... although it may take a few years.

“After enough losses, we can see maybe normal returning because those neofascists will be out of the party,” she said.

July 05, 2021 11:40 PM  
Anonymous remember when Dems tried to stop Amy Coney Barrett because she would destroy Obamacare? they lied.... said...

"As the country marks its 245th Independence Day, the Biden administration has officially missed its target of getting 70% of all adults at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine."

face it, where Trump succeeded, Biden has failed

when Trump left office, a million a day were being vaccinated

Biden set a goal, and didn't meet it

fortunately, Biden wasn't President when the scientific allowed this engineered virus to escape the lab

"And as state governments examine what went wrong with their vaccine rollout programs, a culprit is clear: the younger population is significantly less likely to be vaccinated."

young people have made a choice to forgo a still experimental vaccine that has been approved on an emergency

they have rationally weighed the risk of unknown long-term effects with the chance of becoming seriously which is extremely low for their age group

"A judge has blocked Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' anti "deplatforming" bill, one day before it was due to come into force.

The bill, which DeSantis signed in May, was designed to stop social-media companies from "willfully deplatforming" political candidates in Florida by suspending them."

social deplatforming is unconstitutional

social media companies have been bullied into banning political speech by Dem politicians, and have become de facto branch of government

DeSantis will eventually prevail

"US District Judge Robert Hinkle issued a preliminary injunction Wednesday blocking enforcement of the bill."

"preliminary" being the key word

"Hinkle said the bill violated social media companies' First Amendment rights."

already done by Dem government officials

"Padden blamed the network's broadcasters for the deaths of many Americans from coronavirus and the Jan. 6 insurrection with their continued lies about pandemic safety measures and Donald Trump's election loss, and he said the damage done to the United States was incalculable."

where was he when Cuomo and Fauci were telling lies that costs thousands of lives?

""Fox News has caused many millions of Americans — most of them Republicans (as my wife and I were for 50 years) — to believe things that simply are not true,""

Fauci has caused millions of Americans — most of them Dems (as this guy's wife and he are now) — to believe things that simply are not true

skipped over this idiot's attempt to conflate the pandemic with the election integrity issues

that issue is dead now that the Supreme Court has ruled states may indeed maintain election integrity measures

the Dems lost their attempt to undermine election integrity

the voters will draw their own conclusions about why Dems wanted to do this

July 06, 2021 6:50 AM  
Anonymous gender has consequences said...

a fun story on the Supreme Court:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/the-supreme-court-s-conservatives-have-laid-the-groundwork-for-the-devastation-to-come/ar-AALOclF?ocid=msedgntp

July 06, 2021 9:20 AM  
Anonymous Republicans don't really believe in the Constitution said...

"social deplatforming is unconstitutional"

You are delusional.

There are absolutely no provisions in the Constitution that force private companies to carry political speech (or any other speech) they don't like.

July 06, 2021 9:29 AM  
Anonymous homosexual "marriage" is sado-masochistic said...

"There are absolutely no provisions in the Constitution that force private companies to carry political speech (or any other speech) they don't like."

these "private" companies weren't doing this a couple of years ago

they did so under pressure from Dem government officials

that makes it a government action

July 06, 2021 1:18 PM  
Anonymous Republicans don't really believe in the Constitution said...

A few years ago these private companies didn't have to worry about a president normalizing White Nationalism and all the violence they bring with them, or trying to overturn democracy itself via mob attack on Congress.

All sorts of reasonable people see the wisdom in not spreading those views through their media, be they public officials or not.

White Nationalists, neo-fascists, anti-Semites, and other deplorables are free to see up their own media networks, and they did - many of them going to Parler.

"that makes it a government action"

No it doesn't, idiot. Stop playing the innocent victim.

Democrats passed no laws during Rump's administration the forced media companies to do what they did, and if they had, they of course have the right to challenge that all the way up to Mitch McConnell's stacked Supreme Court.

Those companies made reasonable decisions based on the abuse of their platforms promulgated by unreasonable politicians and their cult of brain-washed followers.

If Obama had done the EXACT SAME THINGS Rump did, you'd be cheering those corporations on and screaming about his authoritarian and fascistic tendencies.

But since it was Rump, you magically find all sorts of excuses and "rationalizations" to excuse his behavior.

Fortunately most Americans aren't stupid enough to believe all that BS, especially now that they've seen all the damage Rump did in 4 years, and what we narrowly avoided on January 6th.

You can't twist the Constitution to fit your authoritarian wet dreams.

July 06, 2021 2:37 PM  
Anonymous Too bad more Republicans aren't listening to Dowd - but then, they'd start having to take some responsibility said...

Former Republican strategist Matthew Dowd said on Tuesday that the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol carried out by pro-Trump insurrectionists was worse for the nation than the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Because there’s been no accountability, it’s given permission to do more of this,” Dowd said on MSNBC. “And not only has it given permission to just average people out there who might do crazy things, it’s allowed the Republicans just to continue this big lie that they’ve pushed across.”

Dowd, who was chief strategist on President George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection effort, said he recently visited the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln, where he contemplated the 16th president’s warning that America would only be destroyed from the inside.

“That’s what I fear about right now,” Dowd said, adding:

“What would happen if after 9/11 we had done nothing? To me, though there was less loss of life on January 6th, January 6th was worse than 9/11 because it’s continued to rip our country apart and give permission for people to pursue autocratic means. And so I think we’re at a much worse place than we’ve been.”

“I think we’re in the most perilous point in time since 1861 and the advent of the Civil War,” he added.

July 07, 2021 8:51 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

"homosexual "marriage" is sado-masochistic"

Maybe yours is, but mine is heavenly.

July 07, 2021 1:54 PM  
Anonymous Kamala's ancestors owned slaves: will she pay reparations? said...

"All sorts of reasonable people see the wisdom in not spreading those views through their media, be they public officials or not."

the American ethic is that bad speech is corrected by good speech, not censorship

anything else is not freedom of speech

"No it doesn't, idiot. Stop playing the innocent victim."

internet companies are shielded from liability by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act

Dem politicians have threatened to take that immunity away if the social media companies don't censor views that aren't progressive

that's de facto government censorship

"Those companies made reasonable decisions based on the abuse of their platforms promulgated by unreasonable politicians and their cult of brain-washed followers."

no, they didn't

they were threatened

phone companies aren't expected to censor phone communication

why should social media companies have to censor internet communication

"If Obama had done the EXACT SAME THINGS Rump did, you'd be cheering those corporations on and screaming about his authoritarian and fascistic tendencies."

no one has ever tried to prevent Obama from speaking

indeed, the more he talks, the better off the GOP is

"But since it was Rump, you magically find all sorts of excuses and "rationalizations" to excuse his behavior."

you are making the classic postmodernist mistake: conflating speech with behavior

that leads to a repressive society

ask anyone in Hong Kong

July 07, 2021 10:37 PM  
Anonymous Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy said...

"the American ethic is that bad speech is corrected by good speech, not censorship
anything else is not freedom of speech"

"Freedom of Speech," as a Constitutional right is explained by the First Amendment:

Amendment I

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

As anyone can see, it doesn't talk about private corporations at all - it's ENTIRELY abut the laws that Congress makes. As you often make references to "Constitutional Originalism," especially in refence to Supreme Court rulings, I would expect you to be more aware of that - and stop ignoring it when it suits your needs for spreading conservative propaganda.

"internet companies are shielded from liability by Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act

Dem politicians have threatened to take that immunity away if the social media companies don't censor views that aren't progressive

that's de facto government censorship"

BS. Media outlets are expected to keep child pornography, videos of murders, and graphic violence off of their platforms all the time. There's no reason they shouldn't keep off treasonous and violence-inciting content as well. In fact, they SHOULD keep those off for the same reasons you can't yell "Fire!" in a crowded theatre - public safety.

And I'm quite sure you wouldn't be making this argument at all if a bunch of LGBTQ folks wanted to join a Christian dating site - you'd be jumping up and down and frothing at the mouth to make sure all those "deviants" weren't allowed on the site, all the time screaming about "freedom of association."

Besides, the Supreme Court has already weighed on this topic - I'll put that in the next post.

July 07, 2021 11:32 PM  
Anonymous Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy said...

MANHATTAN COMMUNITY ACCESS CORP. ET AL. v. HALLECK ET AL.

CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT

No. 17–1702. Argued February 25, 2019—Decided June 17, 2019


New York state law requires cable operators to set aside channels on their cable systems for public access. Those channels are operated by the cable operator unless the local government chooses to itself operate the channels or designates a private entity to operate the channels. New York City (the City) has designated a private nonprofit corporation, petitioner Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN), to operate the public access channels on Time Warner’s cable system in Manhattan. Respondents DeeDee Halleck and Jesus Papoleto
Melendez produced a film critical of MNN to be aired on MNN’s public access channels. MNN televised the film. MNN later suspended Halleck and Melendez from all MNN services and facilities. The producers sued, claiming that MNN violated their First Amendment free-speech rights when it restricted their access to the public access channels because of the content of their film. The District Court dismissed the claim on the ground that MNN is not a state actor and therefore is not subject to First Amendment constraints on its editorial discretion. Reversing in relevant part, the Second Circuit concluded that MNN is a state actor subject to First Amendment constraints.

Held: MNN is not a state actor subject to the First Amendment. Pp. 5–16.
(a) The Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits only governmental, not private, abridgment of speech. See, e.g., Denver Area Ed. Telecommunications Consortium, Inc. v. FCC, 518 U. S. 727, 737. This Court’s state-action doctrine distinguishes the government from individuals and private entities. Pp. 5–14.

(1) A private entity may qualify as a state actor when, as relevant here, the entity exercises “powers traditionally exclusively reserved to the State.” Jackson v. Metropolitan Edison Co., 419 U. S. 345, 352. The Court has stressed that “very few” functions fall into
that category. Flagg Bros., Inc. v. Brooks, 436 U. S. 149, 158. The relevant function in this case—operation of public access channels on a cable system—has not traditionally and exclusively been performed by government. Since the 1970s, a variety of private and public actors have operated public access channels. Early Manhattan public access channels were operated by private cable operators with some help from private nonprofit organizations. That practice continued until the early 1990s, when MNN began to operate the channels.
Operating public access channels on a cable system is not a traditional, exclusive public function. Pp. 6–8.

July 07, 2021 11:37 PM  
Anonymous Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy said...

(2) The producers contend that the relevant function here is more generally the operation of a public forum for speech, which, they claim, is a traditional, exclusive public function. But that analysis mistakenly ignores the threshold state-action question. Providing some kind of forum for speech is not an activity that only governmental entities have traditionally performed. Therefore, a private entity who provides a forum for speech is not transformed by that fact alone into a state actor. See Hudgens v. NLRB, 424 U. S. 507, 520–521. Pp. 8–10.

(3) The producers note that the City has designated MNN to operate the public access channels on Time Warner’s cable system, and that the State heavily regulates MNN with respect to those channels. But the City’s designation is analogous to a government license, a government contract, or a government-granted monopoly, none of which converts a private entity into a state actor—unless the private entity is performing a traditional, exclusive public function. See, e.g., San Francisco Arts & Athletics, Inc. v. United States Olympic Comm., 483 U. S. 522, 543–544. And the fact that MNN is subject to the State’s extensive regulation “does not by itself convert its action into that of the State.” Jackson, 419 U.S., at 350. Pp. 11–14.

(b) The producers alternatively contend that the public access channels are actually the City’s property and that MNN is essentially managing government property on the City’s behalf. But the City does not own or lease the public access channels and does not possess any formal easement or other property interest in the channels. It does not matter that a provision in the franchise agreements between the City and Time Warner allowed the City to designate a private entity to operate the public access channels on Time Warner’s cable system. Nothing in the agreements suggests that the City possesses any property interest in the cable system or in the public access channels on that system. Pp. 14–15. 882 F. 3d 300, reversed in part and remanded.

KAVANAUGH, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which ROBERTS, C. J., and THOMAS, ALITO, and GORSUCH, JJ., joined. SOTOMAYOR, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which GINSBURG, BREYER, and KAGAN, JJ., joined.

July 07, 2021 11:43 PM  
Anonymous Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy said...

"phone companies aren't expected to censor phone communication
why should social media companies have to censor internet communication"

When you're desperately trying to gaslight people, it helps to draw an analogy that makes some sense.

Of course phone companies aren't expected to censor phone communication. We live in the US, not East Germany, China, or Russia - we expect to have some modicum of privacy during our phone conversations - in fact, if the government expects we are criminals, they have to get a court order first before they can even listen in on those conversations.

When you put your message on social media, you're HOPING to get as many people as possible to see it - it serves an entirely different purpose.

"you are making the classic postmodernist mistake: conflating speech with behavior
that leads to a repressive society
ask anyone in Hong Kong"

No, you're making the classic conservative propaganda play - conflating anything a liberal says with repressive communist, fascist, or socialist regimes. It's a disingenuous way of dismissing a position by taking it to a ridiculous extreme and avoiding the important and relevant points of a topic.

There are limits on speech in the US as well. You can't go around threatening to kill people - even if your "behavior" shows you have never killed anyone before. Your speech is enough to get you a restraining order, if not jail time.

The US also has laws regarding sedition:
https://www.findlaw.com/criminal/criminal-charges/sedition.html

"The federal law against seditious conspiracy can be found in Title 18 of the U.S. Code (which includes treason, rebellion, and similar offenses), specifically 18 U.S.C. § 2384. According to the statutory definition of sedition, it is a crime for two or more people within the jurisdiction of the United States:

To conspire to overthrow or destroy by force the government of the United States or to level war against them; To oppose by force the authority of the United States government; to prevent, hinder, or delay by force the execution of any law of the United States; or To take, seize, or possess by force any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof.

Free Speech, Sedition, and Treason
In order to get a conviction for seditious conspiracy, the government must prove that the defendant in fact conspired to use force. Simply advocating for the use of force is not the same thing and in most cases is protected as free speech under the First Amendment. For example, two or more people who give public speeches suggesting the need for a total revolution "by any means necessary" have not necessarily conspired to overthrow the government. Rather, they're just sharing their opinions, however unsavory. But actively planning such an action (distributing guns, working out the logistics of an attack, actively opposing lawful authority, etc.) could be considered a seditious conspiracy.

Ultimately, the goal is to prevent threats against the United States while protecting individuals' First Amendment rights, which isn't always such a clear distinction."

So far, the US has managed to walk the line between free speech and protecting itself from sedition satisfactorily. The last thing we need now is conservatives turning sedition into "free speech" so they can destroy our democracy. But their gaslighting about January 6th shows that's exactly what they are trying to do.

July 08, 2021 12:10 AM  
Anonymous the gay agenda is totalitarian said...

John Roberts will put an end to the Federal government forcing states to eliminate voter integrity rules

Dems won't be able to play any more games

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-revenge-of-john-roberts/ar-AALVK6k?ocid=undefined

July 09, 2021 10:14 AM  
Anonymous hi, it's Hunter Biden. would anyone like to buy my art for 500K? did I mention my dad is President? said...

Dems and the media and TTF and other lunatic radicals have tried to push the idea that laws to assure voting integrity are racist

if we put it to a vote though, 80% of Americans disagree:

Americans support implementation of stricter voting laws, including voter ID requirements and restrictions on accepting ballots after Election Day, according to a new poll out Thursday.

The polling comes as Republicans have advocated for election reforms, with states including Florida, Georgia and Arizona passing stricter voting laws, which top Democrats have argued is a power grab to disenfranchise voters.

The phone survey — which was conducted June 8-June 13 with 800 registered voters, 31 percent of whom identify as Democrats, 29 percent as Republicans, and 36 percent as independents — found 80 percent of its participants feel verifying voter ID “is an important security measure,” while 89 percent said that they are in favor of “purging voter rolls” after individuals have died or are no longer registered in previous areas they resided in.

Changes in Georgia’s voting laws were wildly popular because again, as you’ve seen in everybody’s polling including the media polling, large majorities of Americans favor voter ID.

Former critics of voter ID laws, including voting rights activist Stacey Abrams, have come around to voice support for the change despite previously criticizing the push, crediting numerous polls for their change in heart.

Stacey Abrams in April was against voter ID, it was voter suppression, all of the sudden she says, I was always for voter ID.

The survey found 78 percent of voters polled said in addition to stronger voter ID laws, they also support signature verification, chain of custody controls, bipartisan observers overseeing counting and “cleaning up voter rolls.”

According to the poll, 71 percent said they do not believe ballots should be accepted after election day and 87 percent were against “ballot harvesting.”

Sixty-six percent of voters surveyed agreed that early-voting ballots should be counted as they are received, with just 18 percent saying they disagree. Fifty-three percent said special voting measures put in p[lace due to the pandemic should be lifted due to the vaccination rate and precautions available like wearing masks.

July 09, 2021 10:37 AM  
Anonymous hi, it's Martha Stewart. why am I the only that ever goes to jail for insider trading? said...

Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), bought Amazon call options just six weeks before the Pentagon announced it was canceling a multi-billion dollar contract with Microsoft and starting a new one that opened a door for Amazon’s participation.

The Biden Pentagon on Tuesday abruptly announced it was canceling its multi-billion JEDI cloud services contract with Microsoft and starting a new one that Amazon could compete for.

Amazon had been favored to win the JEDI contract after the idea for a single cloud infrastructure was first conceived in 2017, but it was ultimately awarded to Microsoft in 2019.

July 09, 2021 11:13 AM  
Anonymous The U.S. just experienced its hottest June on record said...

In 127 years of record-keeping, the United States was never this hot in June.

Blistering and record-setting heat waves on both the West Coast and the East Coast made last month the hottest June in U.S. history, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

As the Earth continues to warm, heat waves like what the U.S. experienced in June are becoming more frequent and more intense. With climate change leading to warming temperatures overall, this makes the baseline temperatures for heat waves higher than they otherwise would have been decades ago.

NOAA also noted that the country has already experienced eight natural disasters that topped more than $1 billion each in damage this year, with total losses in the first six months at a near record high.

The previous hottest June on record was 2016, which was nearly a whole degree cooler when it came to the average temperature across the contiguous U.S.

When breaking down the June heat by state, the statistics get even more alarming.

Eight states saw their hottest June on record, including Arizona, California, Idaho, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Utah. California had a statewide average of 6.8 degrees above average. Six other states registered their second-hottest June.

The June temperature records were staggering at the city level. During the Pacific Northwest heat wave of June 25-30, temperatures soared up to 40 degrees above average and approximately 175 record highs were set across parts of northern California, Oregon, Washington and Idaho.

Portland, Oregon, was one of those cities climbing to 116 degrees breaking its record by 9 degrees. Seattle experienced an unprecedented three straight days of triple-digit temperatures. The U.S. Olympic team trials for track and field had to move events to earlier in the morning or after sunset to protect the athletes from the blistering heat. The trials were even halted one afternoon when track temperatures neared 150 degrees.

At the same time that the Pacific Northwest was boiling under one of the worst heat waves in American history, the Northeast endured its second heat wave of the season. Temperatures in the mid-to-upper 90s broke records in cities such as Newark, New Jersey, and New York City. Even Boston hit a rare 100 degrees, which was its first such reading in a decade.

The exceptional heat has also helped to fuel the expansive drought across the entire Western region. Nearly 95 percent of the West is currently facing drought, up from 40 percent this same time last year.

July 09, 2021 8:10 PM  
Anonymous if you believe XY doesn't make you male, you probably don't believe photos from the moon prove the world is round said...

"With climate change leading to warming temperatures overall, this makes the baseline temperatures for heat waves higher than they otherwise would have been decades ago."

what do you expect us to do about it?

the US is already moving toward electric vehicles but there is no easy way to get China to cease pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere since such pollution is fueling their growth and opportunity to spread totalitarianism around the globe

we could also launch massive forestation projects and move toward more nuclear power and fracking of natural gas

still, China is causing problems just like they did with the coronavirus

fortunately, Donald Trump began the process of restraining China but we are only at the beginning of a new cold war in the cyber age

July 09, 2021 9:27 PM  
Anonymous How China Turned the Desert into Green Forests said...

Great Green Wall (China)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Green_Wall_(China)

The Great Green Wall, officially known as the Three-North Shelter Forest Program (simplified Chinese: 三北防护林; traditional Chinese: 三北防護林; pinyin: Sānběi Fánghùlín), also known as the Three-North Shelterbelt Program, is a series of human-planted windbreaking forest strips (shelterbelts) in China, designed to hold back the expansion of the Gobi Desert,[1] and provide timber to the local population.[2] The program started in 1978, and is planned to be completed around 2050,[3] at which point it will be 4,500 kilometres (2,800 mi) long.

Effects of the Gobi Desert

China has seen 3,600 km2 (1,400 sq mi) of grassland overtaken every year by the Gobi Desert.[6] Each year, dust storms blow off as much as 2,000 km2 (800 sq mi) of topsoil, and the storms are increasing in severity each year. These storms also have serious agricultural effects for other nearby countries, such as Japan, North Korea, and South Korea.[7] The Green Wall project was begun in 1978, with the proposed end result of raising northern China's forest cover from 5 to 15 percent, thereby reducing desertification.

Methodology and progress

The fourth and most recent phase of the project, started in 2003, has two parts: the use of aerial seeding to cover wide swathes of land where the soil is less arid, and the offering of cash incentives to farmers to plant trees and shrubs in areas that are more arid.[8] A $1.2 billion oversight system (including mapping and surveillance databases) is also to be implemented.[8] The "wall" will have a belt with sand-tolerant vegetation arranged in checkerboard patterns to stabilize the sand dunes. A gravel platform will be next to the vegetation to hold down sand and encourage a soil crust to form.[8] The trees should also serve as a windbreak from dust storms.

Measuring success

As of 2009, China's planted forest covered more than 500,000 square kilometers (increasing tree cover from 12% to 18%) – the largest artificial forest in the world.[11] In 2008, winter storms destroyed 10% of the new forest stock, causing the World Bank to advise China to focus more on quality rather than quantity in its stock species.[11]

Problems and criticism

If the trees succeed in taking root, they could soak up large amounts of groundwater, which would be extremely problematic for arid regions like northern China.[8] Research of reforested areas of the loess plateau has found that the planted vegetation used decreased the moisture from deeper soil levels to some degree compared to farmland.[12]

Land erosion and overfarming have halted planting in many areas of the project. China's increasing levels of pollution have also weakened the soil, causing it to be unusable in many areas.[6]

Furthermore, planting blocks of fast-growing trees reduces the biodiversity of forested areas, creating areas that are not suitable to plants and animals normally found in forests. "China plants more trees than the rest of the world combined", says John McKinnon, the head of the EU-China Biodiversity Programme. "But the trouble is they tend to be monoculture plantations. They are not places where birds want to live." The lack of diversity also makes the trees more susceptible to disease, as in 2000, when one billion poplar trees in Ningxia were lost to a single disease, setting back 20 years of planting efforts.[13]

Liu Tuo, head of the desertification control office in the state forestry administration, is of the opinion that there are huge gaps in the country's efforts to reclaim the land that has become desert.[14] In 2011, there was around 1.73 million km2 of land that had become desert in China, of which 530,000 km2 was treatable. But at the present rate of treating 1,717 km2 per year, it would take 300 years to reclaim the land that has become desert.[15]

The worry is that the fragile land cannot support such massive, forced growth.[8]

July 10, 2021 1:07 AM  
Anonymous hi, it's Merrick Garland again - the Supreme Court has ruled that states are not racist if they check voter ID so I guess that's why I'm not on the Supreme Court - I just sued Georgia said...

it's nice that China is trying to figure out how to increase forestation but they still have no intention of curbing their output of greenhouse gases

until they do, what the rest of world does is irrelevant

btw, the pandemic caused a huge drop in carbon output last year

if drastic global warming events are occurring a year later, that would suggest the cause is not anthrocentric

July 10, 2021 12:45 PM  
Anonymous IF GLOBAL WARMING THREATENS LIFE ON THE PLANET WHY DO DEMS OPPOSE NUCLEAR ENERGY AND FRACKING?!? said...

"hi, it's Merrick Garland again - the Supreme Court has ruled that states are not racist if they check voter ID so I guess that's why I'm not on the Supreme Court - I just sued Georgia"

it's not just the Supreme Court, Merrick

80% of Americans favor laws to prevent voter fraud

I guess the Dem media propaganda blitz and bullying of corporations didn't work out like they planned

the things that pass for knowledge, I can't understand

July 10, 2021 1:22 PM  
Anonymous The facts are out there said...

"it's nice that China is trying to figure out how to increase forestation but they still have no intention of curbing their output of greenhouse gases"

If you bothered to do even a little bit of googling, you could find out some facts and stop saying all sorts of things that show you have no idea what you're talking about.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_by_country

Top 10 countries by added solar PV capacity in 2019[13]

China: 30,100 MW (26.2%)
United States: 13,300 MW (11.6%)
India: 9,900 MW (8.6%)
Japan: 7,000 MW (6.1%)
Vietnam: 4,800 MW (4.2%)
Spain: 4,400 MW (3.8%)
Germany: 3,900 MW (3.4%)
Australia: 3,700 MW (3.2%)
Ukraine: 3,500 MW (3.0%)
South Korea: 3,100 MW (2.7%)
All others: 31,200 MW (27.2%)


Top 10 countries by cumulative solar PV capacity in 2019[14]

China: 204,700 MW (32.6%)
United States: 75,900 MW (12.1%)
Japan: 63,000 MW (10.0%)
Germany: 49,200 MW (7.8%)
India: 42,800 MW (6.8%)
Italy: 20,800 MW (3.3%)
Australia: 14,600 MW (2.3%)
United Kingdom: 13,300 MW (2.1%)
South Korea: 11,200 MW (1.8%)
France: 9,900 MW (1.6%)
All others: 121,600 MW (19.4%)

China had 2.69 times as much PV installed as the US in 2019.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power_by_country

Top 10 countries by added wind capacity in 2018[13][14]

China: 23,000 MW (44.8%)
United States: 7,588 MW (14.8%)
Germany: 3,371 MW (6.6%)
India: 2,191 MW (4.3%)
Brazil: 1,939 MW (3.8%)
United Kingdom: 1,901 MW (3.7%)
France: 1,565 MW (3.0%)
Mexico: 929 MW (1.8%)
Sweden: 720 MW (1.4%)
Canada: 566 MW (1.1%)
Rest of the world: 7,546 MW (14.7%)

Top 10 countries by cumulative wind capacity in 2020[15]

China: 281,993 MW (38.5%)
United States: 117,744 MW (16.1%)
Germany: 62,184 MW (8.5%)
India: 38,559 MW (5.3%)
Spain: 27,089 MW (3.7%)
United Kingdom: 24,665 MW (3.4%)
France: 17,382 MW (2.4%)
Brazil: 17,198 MW (2.3%)
Canada: 13,577 MW (1.9%)
Italy: 10,839 MW (1.5%)
Rest of the world: 122,046 MW (16.6%)

China had 2.39 times as much wind power installed as the US last year - and just shy of 40% of the entire world's installed base.

Right China has more PV and wind power than any other country on the planet - by far.

July 10, 2021 4:58 PM  
Anonymous The facts are out there said...

https://news.energysage.com/best-solar-panel-manufacturers-usa/

Included in the table below are the solar panel manufacturers with the largest global market share in 2020, based on sales in 2019. This is the most recent data available.

2018 Top solar panel manufacturers

RANK - COMPANY - HEADQUARTERS
1 - - - LONGi Solar - - - China
2 - - - JinkoSolar - - - China
3 - - - JA Solar - - - China
4 - - - Trina Solar - - - China
5 - - - Canadian Solar - - - Canada
6 - - - Hanwha Q-CELLS - - - South Korea
7 - - - Risen Energy - - - China
8 - - - Astroenergy - - - China
9 - - - First Solar - - - USA
10- - - Suntech - - - China

"it's nice that China is trying to figure out how to increase forestation but they still have no intention of curbing their output of greenhouse gases"

7 of the top 10 solar panel manufacturers in the world are in China. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that probably has something to do with the fact that they also have more solar installed than any other country on the planet.

The facts are out there. But feel free to keep spouting your ignorance.

It's a real shame someone hasn't though about creating jobs and building more solar panels here.

July 10, 2021 5:07 PM  
Anonymous I reeeeeeeeally like our Supreme Court.and the best is yet to come!!!!!!! said...

why didn't you google about China's output of greenhouse gases?

solar power isn't economically feasible

if it were, countries with capitalist systems would be all over it

July 10, 2021 5:54 PM  
Anonymous Michael Forsythe said...

China Cancels 103 Coal Plants, Mindful of Smog and Wasted Capacity

China is canceling plans to build more than 100 coal-fired power plants, seeking to rein in runaway, wasteful investment in the sector while moving the country away from one of the dirtiest forms of electricity generation, the government announced in a directive made public this week.

The announcement, made by China’s National Energy Administration, cancels 103 projects that were planned or under construction, eliminating 120 gigawatts of future coal-fired capacity. That includes dozens of projects in 13 provinces, mostly in China’s coal-rich north and west, on which construction had already begun. Those projects alone would have had a combined output of 54 gigawatts, more than the entire coal-fired capacity of Germany, according to figures compiled by Greenpeace.

The cancellations make it likelier that China will meet its goal of limiting its total coal-fired power generation capacity to 1,100 gigawatts by 2020. That huge figure, three times the total coal-fired capacity in the United States, is far more than China needs. Its coal plants now run at about half of capacity, and new sources of power, like wind, solar and nuclear, are coming online at a fast clip.

Nevertheless, China’s capacity would have surged well past the 1,100-gigawatt mark by 2020 had it not begun canceling coal-fired plants in the works. The new announcements are in addition to cancellations detailed last year.

“The key thing is that yes, China has a long way to go, but in the past few years China has come a very long way,” said Lauri Myllyvirta, a researcher for Greenpeace in Beijing.

Electricity generated from coal is the biggest source of the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming, and pollution from such plants contributes to the miasma of smog that has blanketed much of China this winter. But despite the vast amount of capacity added in recent years, China’s coal use has been on the decline since 2013.

Still, China’s state-owned power companies remain politically powerful. Grid operators often favor power generated from coal plants over that made by wind and solar, and despite the cuts, China is still building far more capacity than it needs.

In contrast, utilities in the United States have only four coal-fired plants set to go online through 2020, with a combined capacity of less than 1 gigawatt, according to the Energy Information Administration. The United States retired more than 13 gigawatts of coal capacity in 2015 as the country shifted toward natural gas, wind and solar.

July 10, 2021 7:14 PM  
Anonymous The facts are out there said...

"solar power isn't economically feasible"

Google is your friend:
https://www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/news/india-solar-power-electricity-cancels-coal-fired-power-stations-record-low-a7751916.html

India cancels plans for huge coal power stations as solar energy prices hit record low

Ian Johnston Tuesday 23 May 2017 16:42

India has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations – about the same as the total amount in the UK – with the price for solar electricity “free falling” to levels once considered impossible.

Analyst Tim Buckley said the shift away from the dirtiest fossil fuel and towards solar in India would have “profound” implications on global energy markets.

According to his article on the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis’s website, 13.7GW of planned coal power projects have been cancelled so far this month – in a stark indication of the pace of change.

In January last year, Finnish company Fortum agreed to generate electricity in Rajasthan with a record low tariff, or guaranteed price, of 4.34 rupees per kilowatt-hour (about 5p).

Mr Buckley, director of energy finance studies at the IEEFA, said that at the time analysts said this price was so low would never be repeated.

But, 16 months later, an auction for a 500-megawatt solar facility resulted in a tariff of just 2.44 rupees – compared to the wholesale price charged by a major coal-power utility of 3.2 rupees (about 31 per cent higher).

“For the first time solar is cheaper than coal in India and the implications this has for transforming global energy markets is profound,” Mr. Buckley said.

“Measures taken by the Indian Government to improve energy efficiency coupled with ambitious renewable energy targets and the plummeting cost of solar has had an impact on existing as well as proposed coal fired power plants, rendering an increasing number as financially unviable.

“India’s solar tariffs have literally been free falling in recent months.”

He said about it has been accepted that some £6.9bn-worth of existing coal power plants at Mundra in Gujarat were “no longer viable because of the prohibitively high cost of imported coal relative to the long-term electricity supply contracts”.

This, Mr. Buckley added, was a further indication of the “rise of stranded assets across the Indian power generation sector”.

Investors from all over the world were showing an interest in India’s burgeoning solar sector.

“The caliber of the global financial institutions who are bidding into India’s solar power infrastructure tenders is a strong endorsement of India’s leadership in this energy transformation and will have significant ripple effects into other transforming markets, as is already seen in the UAE, South Africa, Australia, Chile and Mexico,” Mr. Buckley said.

July 10, 2021 7:30 PM  
Anonymous Sara Tomevska said...

A 50 per cent expansion of the world's largest lithium-ion battery in South Australia is now fully operational, increasing its potential output by 50 megawatts.

After weeks of testing, the Tesla battery at Hornsdale, near Jamestown in the state's mid-north, is now capable of delivering 150 megawatts, or 189 megawatt hours.

The expansion — delivered by French renewables company Neoen in conjunction with Tesla and the South Australian and Commonwealth governments — is intended to help stabilise the grid.

"What's great about this expansion is it's making the battery bigger and smarter," Neoen managing director Louis de Sambucy said.

"We will be providing a number of grid-stabilising services, to keep the voltage and frequency very stable," he said.

South Australia's energy minister, Dan Van Holst Pellekaan, said that stabilising technology would prevent large-scale blackouts.

"That shock absorber-type capacity is what helps us to stop a blackout that would otherwise occur."

Apart from keeping the lights on, the giant battery has also been credited with driving down power bills.

An independent review by consultancy firm Aurecon found the Tesla battery has saved SA consumers more than $150 million since it was built in 2017.

"We expect these savings will continue to grow," Mr. Pellekaan said.

The reason large-scale batteries are so crucial to South Australia's grid stability is due to the state's enormous uptake of renewable energy.

For example, more than 278,000 houses in South Australia have rooftop solar panels.

"A third of households with solar is an enormous aggregated solar generator … and we can't actually manage it," [without the battery storage system] Mr. Pellekaan said.

"There are times when we have nearly more electricity going back into the grid from solar than we have coming out of it" Mr. Pellekaan said.

July 10, 2021 7:45 PM  
Anonymous Coal power isn't economically feasible in India said...

IEEFA India: Overestimated LCOEs of coal-fired power plants create a financial bubble
Kashish Shah and Press Release July 7, 2021

India’s future coal-fired power project pipeline carries a massive stranded asset risk due to the collapse in the average utilization rate of its coal-fired power fleet leading to an underestimation of financial risk for new projects, finds a new report from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

There are currently 33 gigawatts (GW) of coal-fired power plants under construction and another 29GW of proposed projects under various stages of regulatory approval in India.

Author of the report, energy finance analyst Kashish Shah says the LCOE (levelised cost of energy) is the required tariff at which the net present value of the investment is zero.

“In other words, LCOE is the minimum required average tariff for a power asset to reach a breakeven return at the end of its life. Anything less than that suggests the asset is unviable.”

Shah found that the average utilization rate of India’s coal-fired fleet has collapsed to a financially unsustainable low of 53% in financial year (FY) 2020/21 from a high of 78% a decade ago in FY2011/12.

For most coal plants in India, the LCOE is calculated with an assumption of utilization factor of 85-90% throughout the life of the project. However, the LCOE turns out to be 64% higher with India’s average capacity utilization factor sitting at ~55% for the last few years.

“The aspiration for further builds of coal capacity stems from the notion that coal is still ‘cheap’,” says Shah. “However, with tariffs now below Rs2/kilowatt hour (kWh) (US$27/MWh), solar power is cheaper than even the variable cost of coal-fired power and is ready to absorb incremental daytime demand.”

IEEFA’s report highlights that utilization factors of coal-fired power plants have declined not just in India, but across major electricity markets including China, the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (U.S.).

“With zero fuel costs, the marginal cost of generation for renewables is practically zero,” says Shah. “On the other hand, with increasing inflation in Indian domestic coal prices and railway transportation costs for coal, the gap between cost competitiveness of renewables versus coal is widening.

“This raises a serious concern about the viability of coal-fired power plants.

“Debt servicing for underutilized coal-fired power assets becomes extremely difficult and creates a liquidity crunch in the whole value chain. The financial stress then spills over to the power distribution sector as well as affecting India’s financial lending institutions. This further inhibits growth in other important segments of the power industry such as renewables and transmission infrastructure, which are extremely critical for India’s electricity sector transition.”

The report concludes that the financial viability of India’s proposed and under construction coal-fired power projects should be re-evaluated based on the right estimation of “This raises a serious concern about the viability of coal-fired power plants.

The report concludes that the financial viability of India’s proposed and under construction coal-fired power projects should be re-evaluated based on the right estimation of utilization factors including LCOE and capacity factor to avoid further bloating of India’s non-performing assets. factors including LCOE and capacity factor to avoid further bloating of India’s non-performing assets.

July 10, 2021 8:01 PM  
Anonymous Uruguay makes dramatic shift to nearly 95% electricity from clean energy said...

Jonathan Watts Thu 3 Dec 2015 05.57 EST

In less than 10 years the country has slashed its carbon footprint and lowered electricity costs, without government subsidies. Delegates at the Paris summit can learn much from its success.

As the world gathers in Paris for the daunting task of switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy, one small country on the other side of the Atlantic is making that transition look childishly simple and affordable.

In less than 10 years, Uruguay has slashed its carbon footprint without government subsidies or higher consumer costs, according to the country’s head of climate change policy, Ramón Méndez.

In fact, he says that now that renewables provide 94.5% of the country’s electricity, prices are lower than in the past relative to inflation. There are also fewer power cuts because a diverse energy mix means greater resilience to droughts.

It was a very different story just 15 years ago. Back at the turn of the century oil accounted for 27% of Uruguay’s imports and a new pipeline was just about to begin supplying gas from Argentina.

Now the biggest item on import balance sheet is wind turbines, which fill the country’s ports on their way to installation.

Biomass and solar power have also been ramped up. Adding to existing hydropower, this means that renewables now account for 55% of the country’s overall energy mix (including transport fuel) compared with a global average share of 12%.

Despite its relatively small population of just 3.4 million, Uruguay has earned a remarkable amount of global kudos in recent years. It enacted groundbreaking marijuana legalization, pioneered stringent tobacco control, and introduced some of the most liberal policies in Latin America on abortion and same-sex marriage.

Now, it is being recognised for progress on decarbonising its economy. It has been praised by the World Bank and the Economic commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the WWF last year named Uruguay among its “Green Energy Leaders”, proclaiming: “The country is defining global trends in renewable energy investment.”

Cementing that reputation, Méndez – formerly the country’s national director of energy – has gone to this week’s UN talks with one of the world’s most ambitious national pledges: an 88% cut in carbon emissions by 2017 compared with the average for 2009-13.

There are no technological miracles involved, nuclear power is entirely absent from the mix, and no new hydroelectric power has been added for more than two decades. Instead, he says, the key to success is rather dull but encouragingly replicable: clear decision-making, a supportive regulatory environment and a strong partnership between the public and private sector.

As a result, energy investment – mostly for renewables, but also liquid gas – in Uruguay over the past five years has surged to $7bn, or 15% of the country’s annual GDP. That is five times the average in Latin America and three times the global share recommended by climate economist Nicholas Stern.

“What we’ve learned is that renewables is just a financial business,” Méndez says. “The construction and maintenance costs are low, so as long as you give investors a secure environment, it is a very attractive.”

July 10, 2021 8:21 PM  
Anonymous Uruguay makes dramatic shift to nearly 95% electricity from clean energy said...

The effects are apparent on Route 5 from Montevideo to the north. In less than 200 miles, you pass three agroindustrial plants running on biofuel and three windfarms. The biggest of them is the 115MW Peralta plant built and run by the German company, Enercon.

Its huge turbines – each 108 metres tall – tower over grasslands full of cattle and rhea birds.

Along with reliable wind – at an average of about 8mph – the main attraction for foreign investors like Enercon is a fixed price for 20 years that is guaranteed by the state utility. Because maintenance costs are low (just 10 staff) and stable, this guarantees a profit.

As a result, foreign firms are lining up to secure windfarm contracts. The competition is pushing down bids, cutting electricity generating costs by more than 30% over the past three years. Christian Schaefer, supervising technician at Enercon said his company was hoping to expand and another German company Nordex is already building an even bigger plant further north along route five. Trucks carrying turbines, towers and blades are now a common sight on the country’s roads.

Compared to most other small countries with high proportions of renewables, the mix is diverse. While Paraguay, Bhutan and Lesotho rely almost solely on hydro and Iceland on geothermal, Uruguay has a spread that makes it more resilient to changes in the climate.

Windfarms such as Peralta now feed into hydropower plants so that dams can maintain their reservoirs longer after rainy seasons. According to Méndez, this has reduced vulnerability to drought by 70% – no small benefit considering a dry year used to cost the country nearly 2% of GDP.

This is not the only benefit for the economy. “For three years we haven’t imported a single kilowatt hour,” Méndez says. “We used to be reliant on electricity imports from Argentina, but now we export to them. Last summer, we sold a third of our power generation to them.”

There is still a lot to do. The transport sector still depends on oil (which accounts for 45% of the total energy mix). But industry – mostly agricultural processing – is now powered predominantly by biomass cogeneration plants.

Méndez attributed Uruguay’s success to three key factors: credibility (a stable democracy that has never defaulted on its debts so it is attractive for long-term investments); helpful natural conditions (good wind, decent solar radiation and lots of biomass from agriculture); and strong public companies (which are a reliable partner for private firms and can work with the state to create an attractive operating environment).

While not every country in the world can replicate this model, he said Uruguay had proved that renewables can reduce generation costs, can meet well over 90% of electricity demand without the back-up of coal or nuclear power plants, and the public and private sectors can work together effectively in this field.

But, perhaps, the biggest lesson that Uruguay can provide to the delegates in Paris is the importance of strong decision-making. As has been the case at countless UN climate conferences, Uruguay was once paralysed by a seemingly endless and rancorous debate about energy policy.

All that changed when the government finally agreed on a long-term plan that drew cross-party support.

“We had to go through a crisis to reach this point. We spent 15 years in a bad place,” Méndez said. “But in 2008, we launched a long-term energy policy that covered everything … Finally we had clarity.”

That new direction made possible the rapid transition that is now reaping rewards.

July 10, 2021 8:24 PM  
Anonymous you know what makes me laugh? TTF said...

"India has cancelled plans to build nearly 14 gigawatts of coal-fired power stations – about the same as the total amount in the UK – with the price for solar electricity “free falling” to levels once considered impossible."

as I said, it will happen by capitalist forces

no government intervention is necessary

July 10, 2021 11:15 PM  
Anonymous when's that big COVID surge TTF predicted 2 months ago coming? said...

I really like our current Supreme Court, an the best is yet to come!

On July 1, the Supreme Court ruled in Americans for Prosperity Foundation v. Bonta the government cannot force nonprofit organizations to disclose the names of their supporters. As a former executive director and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and a statewide youth assistant to Martin Luther King Jr. in the 1960s, I believe this ruling presents one of the most significant wins for civil rights in decades.

The highest court in the nation just ruled in favor of protecting the freedom of Americans to support civil rights organizations and other social justice nonprofits.

In taking the side of AFPF, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and many other nonprofit organizations, the high court invalidated the State of California’s mandate requiring tax-exempt charities to release the names of their largest donors. That’s good news because the demand is entirely tone-deaf to the American people’s freedom to freely associate with outside groups without fear of retribution, which the high court upheld during the civil rights movement.

Thankfully, the Supreme Court understands that supporting causes is not the same as supporting candidates. That is why, in its July 1 overturning of the Ninth Circuit’s decision, Justice John Roberts wrote that the majority “found little evidence that the Attorney General’s investigators relied on Schedule Bs to detect charitable fraud” and “determined that the disclosure regime burdened the associational rights of donors.”

'U-S-A' chants drown out boos as Trump enters arena for UFC match

The high court deserves praise for yet again defending the rights of Americans who privately support activism efforts of paramount importance to the citizenry’s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The ruling in AFPF will protect not only civil rights but the causes of every underserved and underrepresented segment of the population that are worth fighting for each day.

I speak for all activists when I say that this is an opinion no one will soon forget.

July 12, 2021 8:33 AM  
Anonymous hi, it's Hunter Biden. who wants to buy some of my paintings? said...

The pandemic is raging, and with unvaccinated people going into crowds without masks you can be sure we will see a spike in infections,

July 12, 2021 11:04 AM  
Anonymous Unvaccinated Americans Whiter, More Republican Than Vaccinated said...

Americans who say they will definitely not get vaccinated against COVID-19 are overwhelmingly white and Republican, according to polling by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Meanwhile, the group that plans to wait and watch for problems is disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

The United States is falling just short of President Joe Biden's goal of having 70% of Americans receive at least one dose of vaccine by July 4.

While about one-third of Americans have not been immunized against COVID-19, their reasons and intentions break down largely along racial and political lines.

Only 14% of Americans say they will definitely not get vaccinated. But this group is 69% white, compared with 7% Black and 12% Hispanic. Republicans make up 58% of this group, while Democrats account for 18%.

"From the beginning of the pandemic, we've seen political divides in attitudes towards COVID itself, not just the vaccines," said Liz Hamel, director of KFF's Public Opinion and Survey Research program.

For example, she said, "believing that the media has exaggerated the seriousness of the pandemic — that's something that we heard President [Donald] Trump saying when he was in office. It's something that Republicans are more likely to agree with than Democrats. And people who believe that the pandemic has been exaggerated are much less likely to say they want to get the vaccine."

More than half of those who said they would not get vaccinated said they did not need it

On the other hand, KFF polling found that 10% of respondents said that they would "wait and see" before getting the shots.

The "wait and see" group is disproportionately Black (18%) and Hispanic (22%), compared with the "definitely not" group, where they make up 7% and 12%, respectively.

While the "definitely not" group is basically unchanged, the "wait and see" group has shrunk to a quarter of the size it was when vaccines began rolling out in December, as more and more people have gotten their shots...

July 12, 2021 2:47 PM  
Anonymous Delta Variant said...

when's that big COVID surge TTF predicted 2 months ago coming?

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2021/06/us-covid-19-cases-rise-likely-due-delta-variant

https://www.today.com/video/covid-19-cases-are-up-amid-delta-variant-surge-116596805955

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/as-the-delta-variant-surges-in-nevada-the-young-and-unvaccinated-bear-the-brunt

https://www.axios.com/covid-surge-us-delta-variant-075fc778-fb63-4e57-9f2d-81efef1ca685.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html

July 12, 2021 2:52 PM  
Anonymous when's that big COVID surge TTF predicted 2 months ago coming? said...

"The United States is falling just short of President Joe Biden's goal of having 70% of Americans receive at least one dose of vaccine by July 4."

it was sleepy Joe's job to inspire Americans to meet his goal

he failed

kind of like you blamed Trump because Fauci told everyone not to wear masks!

July 12, 2021 5:13 PM  
Anonymous July 11, 2020 said...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wore a mask during a visit to a military hospital on Saturday, the first time the president has been seen in public with the type of facial covering recommended by health officials as a precaution against spreading or becoming infected by the novel coronavirus.

Trump flew by helicopter to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in suburban Washington to meet wounded servicemembers and health care providers caring for COVID-19 patients. As he left the White House, he told reporters: “When you’re in a hospital, especially ... I think it’s a great thing to wear a mask.”

Trump was wearing a mask in Walter Reed’s hallway as he began his visit. He was not wearing one when he stepped off the helicopter at the facility.

The president was a latecomer to wearing a mask during the pandemic, which has raged across the U.S. since March and infected more than 3.2 million and killed at least 134,000. Most prominent Republicans, including Vice President Mike Pence, endorsed wearing masks as the coronavirus gained ground this summer. Republican governors have been moving toward requiring or encouraging the use of masks as the pandemic has grown more serious in some states in the South and West.

Trump, however, has declined to wear a mask at news conferences, coronavirus task force updates, rallies and other public events. People close to him have told The Associated Press that the president feared a mask would make him look weak and was concerned that it shifted focus to the public health crisis rather than the economic recovery. They spoke on condition of anonymity to describe private matters.

While not wearing one himself, Trump has sent mixed signals about masks, acknowledging that they would be appropriate if worn in an indoor setting where people were close together. But he has accused reporters of wearing them to be politically correct and has retweeted messages making fun of Democratic rival Joe Biden for wearing a mask and implying that Biden looks weak.

Questions remain whether Trump will wear a mask with any regularity.




Nope, he didn't.




"In an interview with CBS Evening News anchor and 60 Minutes correspondent Norah O'Donnell published in InStyle magazine, Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, defended his credibility amid a steady stream of attacks on his expertise and trustworthiness from the White House.

In late February and early March as the COVID-19 outbreak began accelerating in the US, hospitals and health facilities experienced severe shortages of personal protective equipment for healthcare workers. In response, experts like Fauci and the US Surgeon General Jerome Adams advised Americans against wearing masks.

"I don't regret anything I said then because in the context of the time in which I said it, it was correct. We were told in our task force meetings that we have a serious problem with the lack of PPEs and masks for the health providers who are putting themselves in harm's way every day to take care of sick people," Fauci told O'Donnell. "

July 12, 2021 6:17 PM  
Anonymous when will Dems apologize to blacks for failing inner city economies, failing inner city schools, and racist inner city police departments that they have overseen for decades? said...

Fauci lied

he could have said, we need the masks for hospital workers so protect yourself by staying home and away from others

instead he said masks didn't work

July 12, 2021 10:34 PM  
Anonymous Republicans don't want to wear masks anyway, you know, because "freedumb!" said...

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, during an interview on a conservative podcast this week, compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's decision to continue to require members of the House to wear masks on the chamber floor to steps the Nazis took to control the Jewish population during the Holocaust.

Greene, in a conversation with the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody Real America's Voice TV show "The Water Cooler," attacked Pelosi and accused her of being a hypocrite for asking GOP members to prove they have all been vaccinated before allowing members to be in the House chamber without a mask.

July 13, 2021 1:56 PM  
Anonymous Fact check: Outdated video of Fauci saying “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask” said...

OCTOBER 8, 2020

A video circulating on social media shows Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), saying “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Fauci’s remarks were made on March 8, 2020 and do not represent his current stance on face coverings nor the updated guidance issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

A post made on Oct. 2 featuring this old video is visible here .

In the clip, Dr Fauci says “There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

Fauci made this comment on an interview with 60 Minutes on March 8, during the early stages of the novel coronavirus outbreak in the United States. A longer extract of the interview is visible youtu.be/PRa6t_e7dgI (see 30-second mark).

The interview predates the CDC’s updated guidance on the use of face coverings. On April 3, 2020, the CDC updated its previous advice and recommended people wear cloth face coverings “in public settings when around people outside their household, especially when social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.”

CDC’s latest guidance on face coverings is visible here . As of this fact check’s publication, the CDC recommendation remains almost the same. They note children under the age of 2, people who have trouble breathing, are unconscious or incapacitated should not wear a mask ( archive.vn/wip/TY8JR ).

As Fauci told the Washington Post here , at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, masks were not recommended for the general public, as authorities were trying to prevent a mask shortage for health workers and the extent of asymptomatic spread was unknown.

As more information became available about SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, health authorities and organizations around the world have changed their stance towards the impact of face masks and the spread of the disease ( here ).

As of the publishing of this fact check, Fauci is encouraging people to wear face coverings. Fauci has reaffirmed this stance on interviews on Sept. 21, Aug. 10 and Aug. 5 that are visible here ( bit.ly/3dbpHsA , bit.ly/36GS9Bz , bit.ly/2GKAw94 ).




Cling to history and ignore progress that was made all you want.

Maybe you can even own a slave again some day!

Is Rump encouraging mask wearing yet??

July 14, 2021 1:24 PM  
Anonymous viva la france said...

doom for Dems is right around the corner

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/07/14/house_republicans_post_record_fundraising_ahead_of_2022_race_146078.html

July 14, 2021 1:25 PM  
Anonymous Uh huh said...

In September, I wrote that the United States faced a situation akin to the 1933 burning of Weimar Germany’s parliament, which Hitler used to seize power.

“America, this is our Reichstag moment,” the column said, citing the eminent Yale historian Timothy Snyder on the lessons of 20th-century authoritarianism. Snyder argued that President Donald Trump had “an authoritarian’s instinct” and was surrounding the election in “the authoritarian language of a coup d’etat.” Predicted Snyder: “It’s going to be messy.”

Trump enablers such as Sen. Lindsey Graham scoffed. “With all due respect to @Milbank, he’s in the bat$hit crazy phase of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” the South Carolina Republican tweeted, with a link to my column.

But now we know that 1933 was very much on the mind of the nation’s top soldier, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “This is a Reichstag moment,” Milley told aides of Trump’s “stomach-churning” lies about election fraud. “The gospel of the Führer,” Milley labeled Trump’s claims.

Milley, as reported in a forthcoming book by The Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, feared that people around Trump were seeking to “overturn the government,” saw that pro-Trump protesters would serve as “brownshirts in the streets” — and was determined that “the Nazis aren’t getting in” to block Joe Biden’s inauguration.

American democracy survived that coup attempt on Jan. 6. But the danger has not subsided. I called Snyder, who accurately predicted the insurrection, to ask how the history of European authoritarianism informs our current state.

“We’re looking almost certainly at an attempt in 2024 to take power without winning election,” he told me Thursday. Recent moves in Republican-controlled state legislatures to suppress the votes of people of color and to give the legislatures control over casting electoral votes “are all working toward the scenario in 2024 where they lose by 10 million votes but they still appoint their guy.”

History also warns of greater violence. “If people are excluded from voting rights, then naturally they’re going to start to think about other options, on the one side,” Snyder said. “But, on the other side, the people who are benefiting because their vote counts for more think of themselves as entitled — and when things don’t go their way, they’re also more likely to be violent.”

The extinguishing of our Reichstag fire on Jan. 6 made Trump’s failed coup less like 1933 Germany than 1923 Germany, when Hitler’s clownish Beer Hall Putsch failed. Historically, most coup attempts fail. “But a failed coup is practice for a successful coup,” Snyder said. This is what’s ominous about the Republicans’ determination to sabotage investigations that could help us learn from the Jan. 6 insurrection. Also ominous is the move in many Republican-controlled states to ban schools from teaching about systemic racism — “memory laws,” Snyder calls them — which “feeds into this authoritarian turn” by providing cover for the new attempts to disenfranchise more non-White voters. “They’re trying to ban the discussion of things like voter suppression, and it’s precisely the history of voter suppression which allows us to see it for what it is,” Snyder said.

July 16, 2021 2:45 PM  
Anonymous Uh huh said...

It all boils down to this: “One of our two political parties is currently on an undemocratic track. That’s just the way it is, I think, for the 2022 and 2024 cycles.”

Many others are sounding similar alarms. A survey of 327 political scientists released this week by Bright Line Watch, a project by scholars at Dartmouth College, the University of Chicago and the University of Rochester, found widespread concern: The experts collectively estimated a 55 percent likelihood that at least some local officials will refuse to certify vote counts in 2024, a 46 percent likelihood that one or more state legislatures will pick electors contrary to the popular vote, and a 39 percent likelihood that Congress will refuse to certify the election.

This is why I write column after column not on the Biden administration, which is governing in conventional ways, but on the totalitarian lurch of the Republican Party. Admittedly, I’m partisan — not for Democrats but for democrats. At the moment, they are one and the same. Republicans have become an authoritarian faction fighting democracy.

This is also why the attempt in Washington to protect voting rights must have primacy if we are to arrest the slide into political violence. “Voting rights is critical,” Snyder explained, because “it makes violence less likely” and it “will make the Republicans become a party that competes again instead of a party which just tries to rig the game at every stage.”

At the moment, Republicans are “digging themselves ever deeper into becoming a party which only wins by keeping other people from voting, and that’s a downward spiral,” he argued. The way to extinguish the next Reichstag fire is to demand — and require — that Republicans honor the right of all Americans to vote.

July 16, 2021 2:45 PM  
Anonymous Only the good die young said...

William H. Regnery II, a racist, reclusive multimillionaire who used his inherited fortune to finance vile white supremacist groups in the hopes of one day forming an American whites-only ethnostate, died earlier this month, his family and associates confirmed. He was 80 years old.

Regnery, whose family amassed riches from its right-wing publishing empire, died on July 2 in Florida after a “long battle with cancer,” his cousin Alfred, the former head of Regnery Publishing, confirmed to HuffPost.

Asked if he’d like to comment on his cousin’s life and legacy, Alfred Regnery replied: “No, it’s all been said before.”

In the final two decades of his life, William Regnery funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars — and likely much more — to extremist groups. He is often credited with being one of the main funders of the so-called alt-right, the resurgent fascist movement that gained momentum during the rise of former President Donald Trump.

“William Regnery’s sordid influence was felt from the deadly Charlottesville Unite the Right rally to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol,” said Tarso Luís Ramos, executive director of Political Research Associates, a social justice think tank that monitors the far right.

“His patronage of white nationalists over more than two decades helped popularize a genocidal vision for a white ethnostate on North American soil and sinking fear of racial replacement in the hearts of a growing portion of the white American population,” Ramos added. “This vision will not prevail, but it won’t either be easily extinguished.”

HuffPost first learned of Regnery’s death on Twitter, where some of the many avowed white nationalists permitted on that platform mourned their benefactor’s passing.

“Bill Regnery was a good man, who cared about the future, and, as they say, ‘did something’ about it,” tweeted Richard Spencer, the racist who led the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist organization Regnery founded.

“I’ll light a cigar for Bill tonight,” added Spencer. “Rest in power, friend.”

Kevin MacDonald — perhaps America’s foremost anti-Semite, who authored a series of books claiming that Jews are genetically hard-wired to destroy Western civilization — also tweeted that he hoped Regnery would “rest in peace.”

MacDonald and Spencer are both members of the Charles Martel Society, a secretive organization of prominent American fascists founded and funded with nearly $90,000 donated from family charities and other tax exempt organizations affiliated with Regnery. (Nonprofits are not legally required to identify individual donors, so it’s possible Regnery personally donated much more.) The society publishes The Occidental Quarterly, a journal for which MacDonald serves as editor.

Other white nationalists who weren’t direct beneficiaries of Regnery’s largesse also expressed sadness at his passing.

“Extremely sad to hear that the heroic William H. (“Bill”) Regnery has passed,” tweeted Peter Brimelow, the founder of the white nationalist foundation VDare.

“My friend and a true hero,” wrote James Edwards, host of the white nationalist radio show “The Political Cesspool.” “He set a sterling example for the rest of us to follow and upon his shoulders we stand.”

Regnery, who went by Bill, was born Feb. 25, 1941, into a prominent Republican family.

His grandfather and namesake, textile magnate William H. Regnery I, was a founding member of the infamous America First Committee. The organization, led by anti-Semitic aviator Charles Lindbergh, opposed America’s intervention in World War II and counted many Nazi sympathizers among its ranks.

July 16, 2021 3:07 PM  
Anonymous Rump voters said...

WASHINGTON, July 16 (Reuters) - Two California men have been indicted on charges they conspired to attack the Democratic Party headquarters in Sacramento, the state's capital city, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday.

According to the unsealed indictment, Ian Benjamin Rogers, 45, of Napa and Jarrod Copeland, 37, of Vallejo started plotting to attack Democratic targets after the 2020 presidential election. They also tried to get support from an anti-government group to further the cause.

The indictment does not name the militia group they contacted, but prosecutors in a different court filing said Copeland emailed the far-right group Proud Boys, trying to "recruit others to join the plot," and also was a member of a militia group affiliated with the Three Percenters.

Both the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters have come under government scrutiny, after some members were indicted in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump.

John Ambrosio, a lawyer for Copeland, said in an email: "We entered a plea of not guilty, denying all allegations and counts. We have no further comments at this time." An attorney for Rogers declined to comment

In numerous messages they exchanged, the two discussed blowing up buildings, the Justice Department said.

In one exchange in January 2021, for instance, Rogers told Copeland: "I want to blow up a democrat building bad."

"I agree," Copeland responded. "Plan attack."

Federal law enforcement agents executed a search warrant on Jan. 15 at Rogers' home and seized a stockpile of weapons including 45 to 50 firearms, thousands of rounds of ammunition and five pipe bombs.

Prosecutors say Copeland tried to destroy evidence during the investigation and communicated with the leader of a militia group who told him to switch communication platforms and delete the evidence.

Rogers was arrested on the day the search warrant was executed and remains in the custody of the state. Copeland was arrested on Thursday and will appear for a detention hearing on July 20, the Justice Department said.

In the detention memo, prosecutors said Copeland joined the U.S. military in December 2013, but was arrested for desertion in May 2014. He received an "other than honorable discharge" in lieu of being court-martialed.

The memo says Copeland and Rogers were infuriated after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, and they "understood they would be viewed as domestic terrorists" if they carried out their vision to overturn the U.S. government.

Their plot allegedly began on Nov. 25, 2020, as Rogers told Copeland in an encrypted messaging application: "Ok bro we need to hit the enemy in the mouth."

Initially, it says, they discussed attacking the California governor's mansion, though later the Democratic headquarters in California became the target. Other possible targets they discussed included the corporate offices for Twitter and Facebook.

A criminal complaint that charged Rogers in the case also said they discussed attacking Democratic contributor George Soros.

The indictment does not allege that Rogers or Copeland had any involvement in the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol.

The FBI is still searching for an unknown suspect who planted explosive devices near the Democratic and Republican committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 5.

July 16, 2021 8:05 PM  
Anonymous hi, it's Hunter Biden. would anyone like to buy my art for 500K? did I mention my dad is President? said...

more trouble from violent trans exposing themselves:

https://nypost.com/2021/07/18/police-break-up-transgender-rights-protests-outside-los-angeles-spa/

July 19, 2021 8:31 AM  
Anonymous I wonder if TTFers agree with any part of the Constitution.... said...

Dems only believe in democracy when it further their agenda. If democratically elected state legislators vote to maintain rules designed to prevent voter fraud, they don't support democracy.

How ironic!

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/07/19/the_walls_are_closing_in_--_on_biden_146097.html

July 19, 2021 9:16 AM  
Anonymous How's all the hydroxychloroquine working for you - is it better than the cleaning fluid injections? said...

Highlights from the transgender rights article:

"Law enforcement sources told the outlet they were not able to find evidence to confirm that a transgender person had indeed been present at the business that day, leading to concerns the video was staged."

"A reporter for The Guardian who was covering the protest said that she was attacked by demonstrators that were screaming about Jesus.

“Just got thrown to the ground by right-wing anti-pedophile protesters as a crowd converged on me and chased me,” Lois Beckett tweeted."

Lois' tweet (which includes video):
https://twitter.com/loisbeckett/status/1416467648364220418

@loisbeckett
Just got thrown to the ground by right-wing anti-pedophile protesters as a crowd coverged on me and chased me. They threw water at me and screamed about Jesus and said to grab my phone. Police would not let me through the police line but after I got thrown on the ground they did.

As for the RCP article, it is a rehash of the months of baseless voting fraud claims that have been laughed out of court for lack of evidence, along with breathless claims of "new" evidence that will prove Rump actually won, and Biden will be removed from office.

It's like Mike Lindell has been spreading his cocaine around to all his conservative buddies.

I'm just surprised they haven't found more "evidence" that Obama's birth certificate was fake.

July 19, 2021 10:29 AM  
Anonymous Haters gonna hate said...

Staged?

You don't say.

You should know that's a common tactic of religious types who get the vapors when others don't hate like they do.

See:

http://vigilance.teachthefacts.org/2008/03/shower-nuts-admit-rio-incident-was.html

"..."MARTHA KLEDER: Well Theresa, I also heard that someone tried to test this. Was there some event where a transgender or a shemale or someone tried to use the opposite sex bathroom?

THERESA RICKMAN: Yes, at Rio Sport and Health up in Germantown. A guy dressed as a girl went into the ladies bathroom. And, ah you know, essentially what uh, that was meant to get some media attention, you know, and the guy left immediately apparently, I mean but there was, this is the Rio Sport and Health Club, you know and Sport and Health has steam rooms, and there are ladies changing in those locker rooms, people in various stages of undress [laughing] all the time, so there's lots a guy can see..."

July 19, 2021 1:52 PM  
Anonymous Guilty and suddenly remorseful -- yeah, and I'm a virgin, aren't you? said...

A federal judge on Monday handed down an eight-month prison term to the first person to be sentenced for a felony in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach, after attorneys argued whether the punishment would divide the country, deter future threats to lawmakers, or lead hundreds of other charged to face trial or plead guilty.

Tampa crane operator Paul Allard Hodgkins, 38, pleaded guilty last month to one count of obstructing a joint session of Congress meeting to confirm the results of the 2020 president election. He was seen carrying a red-and-white “Trump 2020” flag into the well of the abandoned Senate while others stood over the vacated vice president’s chair.

“The symbolism of that act was unmistakable,” U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss said. “He was staking a claim on the floor of the U.S. Senate not with an American flag, but declaring his loyalty to a single individual over the nation. In that act, he captured the threat to democracy that we all witnessed that day.”

Moss said the Capitol riots caused damage far greater than the few hours of delay in Congress’s tallying of the electoral votes, saying it “left a stain that will remain on our nation for decades.”

“It means it will be harder for all of us to tell our children and grandchildren that democracy stands as the immutable foundation of our nation. It means we are all fearful of the next attack in a way we never were, and it makes us question whether our democracy is less secure than we believed just months ago,” Moss said, calling the harms “enormous” and “chilling.”

In a statement before he was sentenced, Hodgkins said, “I can say without a shadow of a doubt I am truly remorseful and regretful for my actions in our nation’s Capitol on January 6, the damage that my actions caused and the way the country I love has been hurt.”

July 19, 2021 2:02 PM  
Anonymous So Miles, when do you think the rest of the Republican party will wake up and smell the covfefe? said...

A former Homeland Security official under Donald Trump says his own party is a national security threat.

Miles Taylor, who served as the agency’s deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, told MSNBC’s Jason Johnson that he’s not a political operative, just someone who works in national security.

“And the number one national security threat I’ve ever seen in my life to this country’s democracy is the party that I’m in, the Republican Party,” Taylor said on Thursday, adding: “If my party retakes the House of Representatives in the next cycle, it’s going to become a haunted house. And the ghoul and the specter haunting that house is going to be Donald Trump.”

Taylor called out House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) for continuing “to pay homage to a twice-impeached presidential loser,” and warned that if McCarthy becomes speaker, it’ll really be Trump’s hand on the gavel. That notion, he said, should give all Americans pause.

Taylor served in DHS while the agency carried out Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their families, later telling Telemundo that he regretted having not denounced it at the time.

He has also admitted to writing the 2018 “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times that sent Trump on a fruitless hunt for the author.

July 19, 2021 10:33 PM  
Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...

"A former Homeland Security official under Donald Trump says his own party is a national security threat.

Miles Taylor, who served as the agency’s deputy chief of staff and then chief of staff from 2017 to 2019, told MSNBC’s Jason Johnson that he’s not a political operative, just someone who works in national security."

glad he approached an objective news like MSNBC

LOL!

you'd think, with such a grave threat, he'd be able to state how this a threat, other than to the socialist agenda of the Biden-Warren-Sanders gang

"He has also admitted to writing the 2018 “Anonymous” op-ed in The New York Times"

that just about concludes our evaluation of his character

thanks for the laugh!

July 20, 2021 5:47 AM  
Anonymous government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem said...

"How's all the hydroxychloroquine working for you - is it better than the cleaning fluid injections?"

tests have shown that hydroxychloroquine, used early in infection cases, in combination with zinc supplements, significantly reduces death rates

the false media coverage, motivated by Trump Derangement Syndrome, likely cost lives

TTFers share responsibility for that health misinformation

July 20, 2021 5:53 AM  
Anonymous Stop peddling bad hydroxychloroquine info - one un-replicated study doesn't outweigh all the other evidence said...

September 4, 2020

Summary
What is already known about this topic?

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are approved to treat autoimmune diseases and to prevent and treat malaria. Earlier this year, they were widely reported to be of potential benefit in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19; however, current data indicate that the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks.

What is added by the report?

New prescriptions by specialists who did not typically prescribe these medications (defined as specialties accounting for ≤2% of new prescriptions before 2020) increased from 1,143 prescriptions in February 2020 to 75,569 in March 2020, an 80-fold increase from March 2019.

What are the implications for public health practice?

Attention to updated clinical guidance, especially by nonroutine prescribers, will help safeguard supplies and ensure safe use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for patients with approved indications.

Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, primarily used to treat autoimmune diseases and to prevent and treat malaria, received national attention in early March 2020, as potential treatment and prophylaxis for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) (1). On March 20, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate in the Strategic National Stockpile to be used by licensed health care providers to treat patients hospitalized with COVID-19 when the providers determine the potential benefit outweighs the potential risk to the patient.*

*Link to revoked copy of EUA: https://www.fda.gov/media/136534/download

Following reports of cardiac and other adverse events in patients receiving hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 (2), on April 24, 2020, FDA issued a caution against its use† and on June 15, rescinded its EUA for hydroxychloroquine from the Strategic National Stockpile.§ Following the FDA’s issuance of caution and EUA rescindment, on May 12 and June 16, the federal COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel issued recommendations against the use of hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine to treat COVID-19; the panel also noted that at that time no medication could be recommended for COVID-19 pre- or post-exposure prophylaxis outside the setting of a clinical trial (3).

July 20, 2021 9:32 PM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solution. Republicans are the problem. said...

"that just about concludes our evaluation of his character"

No, your summary dismissal based on his willingness to say "the emperor wears no clothes" says far more about your character than it does his. And it doesn't matter what channel his truth comes from, it's still the truth.

Your problem is that you think reality itself has a left-wing bias. It doesn't. It's just reality. Conservatives gave up on reality in favor of their own narrative years ago. The longer they keep believing the stuff they make up, the worse it gets, and the further detached from reality they become.

Now, the insurrection on January 6th was just a "normal tourist visit." Apparently, cops having the crap beat out of them with "Blue Lives Matter" and MAGA flags happens every day.

But that kind of gaslighting only works on folks who are already drunk on the Orange Kool-Aid.

July 20, 2021 9:44 PM  
Anonymous hi, rememba me?, it's Merrick Garland again. just checking to see if there are any openings on the Supreme Court said...

Merrick Garland is one of our funniest AGs ever. He's going to Chicago now to stop gun violence. LOL!

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/22/garland-chicago-surging-gun-violence-500513

"your summary dismissal based on his willingness to say "the emperor wears no clothes" says far more about your character than it does his"

he wasn't willing to say "the emperor wears no clothes"

he was afraid to say it so he told someone else to say it

meanwhile, he kept coming to the office every day to help the allegedly naked emperor enact his agenda

and hid his actual views

what a coward!

"Your problem is that you think reality itself has a left-wing bias."

I think reality has a conservative bias

and that's easy to tell because leftists are always trying to stop speech

earlier this week, Biden was blaming the Delta variant on social media free speech

his government is trying to bully social media companies into stopping any speech against the Dem agenda

"Hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are approved to treat autoimmune diseases and to prevent and treat malaria. Earlier this year, they were widely reported to be of potential benefit in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19; however, current data indicate that the potential benefits of these drugs do not outweigh their risks."

the risks aren't great and they do indeed reduce COVID death rates

if the risks were significant, they wouldn't be used for malaria

July 22, 2021 7:02 PM  
Anonymous hi, it's Hunter Biden. who wants to buy some of my paintings? said...

I don't know why we never thought of this before. If crime rises because Joe Biden's supporters defund the police, we'll just send Merrick Garland to crack a few skulls

that oughta scare the hell outta 'em!


https://apnews.com/article/health-government-and-politics-shootings-coronavirus-pandemic-gun-politics-fc16e2a1a4571be552d82def7bd5e781

July 23, 2021 11:33 AM  
Anonymous The FBI confirmed that it received 4,500 tips on Kavanaugh — only to hand them to the Trump White House said...

During the 2018 confirmation hearings for Donald Trump's Supreme Court appointee Brett Kavanaugh, Republicans actually bothered trying to create the appearance that they took allegations of sexual assault seriously. Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were clearly concerned about looking like they were being dismissive or rude to the woman who stepped forward to accuse Kavanaugh of attempted rape in high school, Christine Blasey Ford. They were so worried, in fact, that the male-only Republican side of the panel hid behind a female interlocutor, Rachel Mitchell, who was hired to question Blasey Ford for them.

The whole thing was just an act, of course. That was obvious at the time, because the Republican-controlled Judiciary Committee, while allowing Blasey Ford to testify, refused to call other potential corroborating witnesses, including a woman who claimed to have had a similar encounter with Kavanaugh in college. But a new report this week underscores the phoniness of Republican claims to take allegations of sexual assault seriously.

The supposed FBI investigation of Kavanaugh that the Trump White House and Senate Republicans ordered — and then used to claim Kavanaugh was exonerated — is looking more sham-like. The newest revelation is that, while the FBI got over 4,500 calls on their tipline about Kavanaugh, the ones deemed relevant were merely passed onto Trump's White House, who almost certainly tossed them in File #13.

In the months and years after the Kavanaugh hearing, it's become common wisdom on the right that Kavanaugh was done dirty and that the whole situation was proof that the #MeToo movement had gone "too far". But, critically, not because conservative America believed Blasey Ford was lying. It was much more that they didn't care if she was telling the truth. That's why they didn't bother to find out, either way. The grim reality is that, as a general rule, Republicans simply don't think it matters in many cases if a man has a history of sexual abuse. This wasn't a "we don't believe he did it" situation. This was a "who cares if he did it?" situation.

The Potemkin investigation of Kavanaugh's background illustrates this ugly reality. Republicans believed it was politically important to look like they care about sexual assault, so they made a big show of "investigating" it. But they do not actually care about sexual assault and have nothing but contempt for people who do care about the issue. And so it was about propping up an illusion of concern, while not actually doing anything substantive at all.

The idea that Kavanaugh is the victim of overzealous feminists and opportunist Democrats has less to do with a belief that he's innocent and more about a belief that it shouldn't matter if men do things like this. It's all tied up with the ongoing outrage on the right about "cancel culture" and "wokeness." The anger flows from a conservative sense of entitlement to do and say awful things without having to face any consequences for it. Conservatives just want liberals to quit talking about it, because, ultimately, they don't see why it should matter. And, in fact, they're annoyed that "woke" people keep insisting that these things do matter.

July 23, 2021 6:41 PM  
Anonymous GOPer DeSantis says there will be no mask mandates in Florida schools even though one in five new COVID cases are currently in Florida alone said...

Just three red states ― Florida, Texas and Missouri ― accounted for 40% of all new cases of the delta variant over the past week. All have comparatively low inoculation rates.

One in five new cases was in Florida alone, for the second week in a row. The Sunshine State recently documented its highest daily number of new cases since late January, with 12,647 recorded on Wednesday, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Overall, states in the Northeast are doing the best job distributing the shots ― Vermont is approaching 70% of its population being fully vaccinated ― while the South and parts of the West struggle to convince people to get the jab. Texas and Missouri lag behind much of the country in vaccinations, with 43% and 40% of their respective populations fully inoculated. Florida is squarely in the middle, with 48% fully inoculated, according to CDC data.

In Alabama, which is also recording new cases at the same rate as it did in late January, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey declared Thursday that “it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks” for “letting us down.”

Ivey appeared frustrated when a reporter asked what could be done to encourage more Alabamans to get their shots, saying, “I don’t know. You tell me. Folks supposed to have common sense.”

The Biden administration said Thursday it would be sending an additional $100 million to rural health clinics to help support vaccination efforts; the administration sent $400 million to around 1,500 rural hospitals to increase testing.

The vast majority of new infections, hospitalizations and deaths are now occurring in unvaccinated people; more than 99% of recent deaths are among the unvaccinated.

July 24, 2021 7:04 AM  
Anonymous GOP resistance to vaccines June 8, 2021 said...

...Monthly surveys by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that about 20% of the population was staunchly opposed to getting vaccinated at the beginning of the year and remains so today. As the share of Americans who say they are in “wait and see” mode has declined to only 12% from 31% in January, the pool of new possibilities has shrunk. Mass-inoculation centers are being phased out in favor of a strategy bringing shots to trusted messengers—such as the new campaign to organize 1,000 barbershops in black neighborhoods.

As vaccine fears have eased and access has improved, the principal remaining obstacle to near-universal vaccination is the large number of Republicans who are declining to participate.

The partisan gap is astonishing. More than 80% of Democrats have already received at least one shot, compared with 49% of Republicans. Twenty-seven percent of Republicans say that they won’t get vaccinated under any circumstances, and an additional 9% will do so only if required. The comparable figures for Democrats are 3% outright refusal and 3% only if required.

In November, Joe Biden carried all 20 of the states that now have the highest vaccination rates, while Donald Trump carried 17 of the 20 states with the lowest rates. Recent research finds a similar pattern in House districts.

Some obvious explanations for this gap don’t hold. Republicans are older than Democrats on average, and older Americans have higher vaccination rates. But strangely, Republicans overall are getting inoculated at the rate of 18- to 29-year-olds, while Democrats are receiving shots at the rate of Americans 65 and older.

Another dimension of demography deepens the puzzle. Eighty-one percent of Republicans are white, compared with 59% of Democrats. White Americans are getting vaccinated at higher rates than blacks and Hispanics, who comprise 32% of Democrats but only 9% of Republicans. All else equal, the vaccination rate among Republicans should be much higher than it is among Democrats. But the opposite is true.

Two other demographic differences help explain the gap. White evangelical Protestants make up one-third of the Republican Party, compared with only 6% of Democrats, and their vaccination rate is well below the national average.

Americans with college degrees are vaccinated at higher rates, and a larger percentage of Democrats are college-educated. In particular, whites who didn’t graduate from college make up 57% of Republicans but only 30% of Democrats.


Also see The Red/Blue Divide in COVID-19 Vaccination Rates is Growing, July 8, 2021

July 24, 2021 7:18 AM  
Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...

Biden's approval rating is 50%:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/352733/biden-approval-drops-lowest-date.aspx

Dems have half the Senate

they lead the House by a mere 7

yet they think they have a broad mandate to install a socialist "utopia" and engage in massive inflation-inducing deficit spending

Americans will set them straight on November 2022

July 24, 2021 4:15 PM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solution. Republicans are the problem. said...

Rump's approval rating was never that high, and he never even won over the majority of American voters.

Yet somehow Republicans got the mistaken notion the he had a mandate for massive corporate tax cuts that add trillions to the deficit - essentially printing money, like they did during the Reagan administration, and they have never come close to paying down - a recipe for inflation that has so far been avoided because most Americans can't afford to buy enough any more to cause it.

But when the inflation inevitable arrives because of a debt crisis that has slow been building for 40 years, you can bet Republicans will blame Democrats for it, even though all their deficit spending was just as bad, and arguably worse than the Dems - especially during the Clinton years, when he nearly balanced the budget.

On another note, why do Republicans think they will have American support after the attempted insurrection in January? Then of course, there are all the belligerently unvaccinated folks, who have slowly been dropping off the registered voter lists over the past 18 months.

And any guy that gets love letters from Kim Jong-un is not a good leader for an American political party, whether he's orange or not, but that hasn't stopped a lot of the Republican top brass from kissing his, umm, ring.

July 24, 2021 6:25 PM  
Anonymous Easy to see said...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

Rump would have loved to reach a 50% approval rating as president, but he never did.




July 25, 2021 7:04 AM  
Anonymous during her campaign, Kamala said she wouldn't take the vaccine and now she's surprised there are people who took her seriously said...

"Rump's approval rating was never that high, and he never even won over the majority of American voters."

well, he isn't President

when he was, he had a style that sought to stir up a new controversy a day, sometimes two

but the support he did have was rock solid

never really changed

Slidin' Biden's approval rating momentum goes one way and is lower than all recent Presidents other than the abrasive Trump

on its current trajectory, his approval rating will be less than 40 by November 2022

but his rating alone was not the point

the point is we have a country divided closely and Dems are trying to project an impression they have a sweeping mandate to impose a European-style socialist "utopia"

it's why Americans will reject them in November 2022

indeed, they are aware of that, even if you aren't

which is why they are in such a rush

if next year, inflation and crime are soaring and all Dems can talk about is January 6, they will get another "shellackin'" like Obama got

btw, after Dems blamed Trump for the COVID surges last year, they will have to take responsibility for the Delta surge

it's happening because a swath of Americans refused to be vaccinated

Slidin' Biden and Traitor Harris spent their entire campaign trying to sow doubts about the vaccine because it was being developed during Trump's presidency

America is reaping what they've sown

July 26, 2021 5:36 AM  
Anonymous Any comments with profanity, advocacy of violence, harassment, personally identifiable information or other violations will be removed. If you feel your comment has been removed in error please contact us! said...

Like many of you, I have had a lot of misinformation thrown at me by politicians and the media during the pandemic. And, like many of you, I spent a lot of time sorting through it all, trying to make the best decision I could for myself and my family.

What I found was simple: Dr. Fauci and the “because science says so” crowd of arrogant, condescending politicians and bureaucrats were wrong about more than their mandates and shutdowns that have inflicted incalculable harm on our people and economy. They also misjudged the Trump vaccine plan, which rolled out just as safely, quickly, and effectively as the Trump administration promised.

When the Trump administration initiated Operation Warp Speed in May 2020, the president stated that a vaccine would become available by December of that year at the very latest. From the moment he made his announcement, the “expert” class tried to undermine those statements with baseless fear-mongering.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece claiming that whatever the Trump administration released would likely be a dangerous political stunt. CNN did the same. But no one did more to undercut public confidence in the vaccine than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden doubted that the vaccine would be “real,” while Harris said in a nationally-televised debate that she would not take any vaccine the Trump administration had a hand in creating.

“A free people claim their rights, as derived from the laws of nature.“

Thomas Jefferson




July 26, 2021 5:46 AM  
Anonymous remember how wonderful the economy was when Jimmy Carter was President? said...

Even the 50% approval rating is a bit rosier than the situation justifies. 54% of Americans say the economy is in poor shape. Guess how they decide their vote, stupid...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden is banking on the idea of making life more affordable for middle-class families — and that's where the recent bout of inflation poses both a political and an economic risk.

The U.S. economy may be poised for the fastest growth since 1984, but many Americans are not feeling all that confident about the economy, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Republican lawmakers have attacked the Biden administration over inflation as the country reopened from the coronavirus pandemic, and feelings about the economy are settling along partisan lines.

Fewer than half, 45%, judge the economy to be in good shape, while 54% say it’s in poor shape. Views are similar to what they were in AP-NORC polls in June and in March, despite increases in vaccinations and the flow of aid from Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

July 26, 2021 11:43 AM  
Anonymous Bilie Jean King said...

"The Norwegian Women’s Beach Handball team is facing fines for wanting to wear shorts instead of bikini bottoms. The bottoms are not to cover 'more than 10cm on any sides.' The men’s team wears shorts. The sexualization of women athletes must stop."

July 26, 2021 12:16 PM  
Anonymous gender has consequences said...

Bilie Jean King,

Please don't assume all female athletes are lesbians like you

the bikinis make the sport more fun

July 26, 2021 1:38 PM  
Anonymous Pop singer Pink supports Norwegian women's beach handball team protest over fines for 'very sexist' uniform rules said...



"I’m VERY proud of the Norwegian female beach handball team FOR PROTESTING THE VERY SEXIST RULES ABOUT THEIR “uniform”. The European handball federation SHOULD BE FINED FOR SEXISM. Good on ya, ladies. I’ll be happy to pay your fines for you. Keep it up.
10:49 PM · Jul 24, 2021"


The Neanderthals at the Olympic Committee apparently forgot about Larry Nasser.

Look who thinks lesbians are not attracted to women's bodies! LMAO

The difference is lesbians also respect women's bodies, not to mention, lesbians also have a lower HIV/AIDS rate than heterosexual men.


July 26, 2021 3:26 PM  
Anonymous Germany Gymnastics Team Tired of ‘Sexualization,’ Wears Unitards said...

TOKYO (AP) — The team’s outfits looked similar to the others in the room as the arena lights gleamed off crystals crisscrossing their chests and down their crimson and white sleeves.

But the German gymnastics team’s new Olympic suits didn’t stop at their hips.

For decades, female gymnasts have worn bikini-cut leotards. In qualifying on Sunday, however, the German team instead wore unitards that stretched to their ankles, intending to push back against sexualization of women in gymnastics.

The Tokyo Olympics are the first Summer Games since Larry Nassar, a former USA Gymnastics national team doctor, was sent to prison for 176 years for sexually abusing hundreds of gymnasts, including some of the sport’s greatest stars. At his sentencing, athletes — some of them Olympians — described how the sport’s culture allowed for abuse and objectification of young women and girls.

Male gymnasts wear comparatively body-covering clothes: singlets, with loose shorts for their floor exercise and vault, and long pants on bar and pommel horse routines.

The German team first wore unitards at the European Artistic Gymnastics Championships in April.

Sarah Voss, a 21-year-old German, said they weren’t sure they would decide to wear them again during Olympic competition until they got together before the meet.

“We sat together today and said, OK, we want to have a big competition,” Voss said. “We want to feel amazing, we want to show everyone that we look amazing.”

Their wardrobe revolution, while widely championed, has not so far started a trend. Leotards that leave the legs bare were worn by every other female gymnast during qualifying at the Tokyo Games.

At 4-foot-8, American superstar Simone Biles said in June that she prefers leotards because they lengthen the leg and make her appear taller.

“But I stand with their decision to wear whatever they please and whatever makes them feel comfortable,” Biles said. “So if anyone out there wants to wear a unitard or leotard, it’s totally up to you.”

July 26, 2021 3:29 PM  
Anonymous It's too late now Amanda, Republicans had two impeachment trials handed to them with the perfect opportunity wash your hands clean - instead Republicans doubled down said...

A furious Amanda Carpenter ripped into the senior leadership of the Republican Party for tearing the GOP apart over fears of former president Donald Trump.

The conservative CNN commentator who once served as speechwriter to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was responding to a report from CNN's Melanie Zanona that states that rank and file Republicans want Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) punished for taking part in the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol riot.

According to the conservative commentator, Republicans are "screwed" unless someone in leadership stands up to Trump.

"You know, this whole idea that Donald Trump is going to magically go away and we can wring our hands that it shouldn't be this way, but if anybody stands up to it, they're somehow the problem, right?" she began as her raised her voice. "Unwavering loyalty to Donald Trump is absolutely becoming the litmus test for membership in the Republican Party and it's because of people like [House Minority Leader] Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) who run around and say, 'Well, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, you accept this assignment from [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), I don't know if I can call you Republican anymore.'"

"Where is [Senate Minority Leader] Mitch McConnell?" she demanded. "He's hiding out. So unless you have people like Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger making the case for how this transcends politics and why this is a much bigger issue than Donald Trump and the Republican Party, we're screwed."

"Keep crying about the future of the Republican Party because the road where we're going down is where you only have candidates like [Reps.] Paul Gosar (R-AZ), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Herschel Walker," she warned. "That's what you're going to get if you don't stand up and speak out against this and support people like Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney."

July 26, 2021 5:52 PM  
Anonymous “We’re here to tell government … don’t come knocking on my door with your Fauci ouchie.” L. Boebert said...

“The easiest way to make the Delta variant go away is to turn off CNN. And vote Republican.” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) - neither a scientist nor a medical doctor.

Right-wing conservatives are so anxious to celebrate "any failure by the Biden administration" that they're literally killing people with anti-vaccine rhetoric,
especially in red states, according to a new report from NBC News.

The story points to how attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this month cheered when a speaker pointed out that the Biden administration had fallen slightly short of its goal of getting 70 percent of the U.S. adult population vaccinated for COVID-19 by July 4.

"For people who are politically intoxicated, which is a lot of the country right now, it makes sense to celebrate any failure by the administration," former Rep. Carlos Curbelo, R-Fla., told NBC News.

The story details how right-wing members of Congress like Reps. Lauren Boebert, Madison Cawthorn, and Marsha Blackburn, along with Fox News and NewsMax hosts, have pushed back against the Biden administration's vaccine efforts. "We have these talking heads who have gotten the vaccine and are telling other people not to get it," Utah GOP Gov. Spencer Cox said last week. "That kind of stuff is dangerous, it's damaging, and it's killing people."

The story notes that nearly half of Republicans say they're unlikely to get vaccinated, compared to 6 percent of Democrats, and five of the six states with the highest daily average of COVID cases over the last two weeks, voted for Trump.

Epidemiologist Brian Castrucci, who specializes in targeting pro-vaccination messaging at conservatives, suggested that the problem stems from former president Donald Trump's response to COVID. "There was a moment to bring unity to this pandemic response," he said. "And we missed it. And we are now dealing with the consequences."

“Biden has deployed his Needle Nazis to Mesa County. The people of my district are more than smart enough to make their own decisions about the experimental vaccine and don’t need coercion by federal agents.” - Lauren Boebert (R)

July 26, 2021 6:07 PM  
Anonymous watch Slidin' Biden try to shift blame for a problem he caused - no one is fooled said...

When the Trump administration initiated Operation Warp Speed in May 2020, the president stated that a vaccine would become available by December of that year at the very latest. From the moment he made his announcement, the “expert” class tried to undermine those statements with baseless fear-mongering.

The New York Times ran an opinion piece claiming that whatever the Trump administration released would likely be a dangerous political stunt. CNN did the same. But no one did more to undercut public confidence in the vaccine than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Biden doubted that the vaccine would be “real,” while Harris said in a nationally-televised debate that she would not take any vaccine the Trump administration had a hand in creating.

July 26, 2021 6:54 PM  
Anonymous slip slidin' away said...

the clock is ticking

as crime rises and inflation soars

Slidin' Biden can't get anything done

Mitch and the boys are outmaneuvering him on the infrastructure bill mess

the Dems' attack on voting integrity can't pass

we still don't have 70% vaccination, despite Joe Cool's July 4th goal, largely due to fears he & Kam stoked

the Delta variant, unheard of during the last administration, is exploding

where's all the media griping about contact testing?

you know, how Trump was at fault for everything but Slidin' Biden gets a media pass

fortunately, the MSM media has made themselves irrelevant

Biden is history's first President to become a lame duck after less than a year!

July 27, 2021 6:29 AM  
Anonymous slidin' Biden has now dropped to 48% said...

Corporate media and Big Tech colluded with the Democratic Party to gaslight the country into electing Joe Biden as a return to normalcy. Six months in, the country is getting that normalcy, and they’re getting it good and hard — but without any of the Barack Obama packaging of “hope” that sold it in the first place.

According to the latest Gallup poll, America has already tired of the Biden agenda. His approval rating among his own party has slipped by near double-digits, and among Independents, he has fallen from 61 percent to 48 percent. This marks a slide the White House is unlikely to reverse, given that voters now understand the truth: Biden is merely the figurehead of a leftist agenda out of touch with the priorities of Americans.

The percent of Americans optimistic about where the nation is heading has dropped 20 points just since spring — to 45 percent from 64 percent, an ABC News/Ipsos poll found. Now 55 percent are pessimistic. Much of this decline is about a lack of confidence in the president himself. The media did their best to shield Biden from even marginally tough questions before he was elected. Now, confronted with even the friendliest questions from Biden promotional network CNN, he meanders, forgets, and loses his place. Tasked with answering for a border crisis of their own making, his vice president openly muses that maybe she doesn’t say “no” enough.

July 27, 2021 9:30 AM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solution. Republicans are the problem. said...

"the Delta variant, unheard of during the last administration, is exploding"

Yes it is - it's up to roughly 50,000 cases per day - which sounds huge, until you realize that during Rump's last month in office, it frequently went above 250,000 cases per day.

"we still don't have 70% vaccination, despite Joe Cool's July 4th goal, largely due to fears he & Kam stoked"

Keep trying to rewrite history, Orwell. New cases were dropping below 10,000 per day last month thanks to Biden's vaccination push. The whole time however, the right-wing death-cult media has been feeding their base lie after lie about government control, taking away their rights, and downplaying the severity of the virus. They are actively discouraging their viewers from getting the vaccine and then trying to pin the blame on Biden when vax targets aren't reached.

You must think most people in the country are as stupid and gullible as the right wing base that falls for that kind of propaganda. They are not. That's why Biden got nearly 8 million more votes than Rump did. You can't fool all the people all the time.

...And then you complain about being condescended to.

If you don't want to be condescended to, stop engaging in such blatantly stupid fumb duckery.

July 27, 2021 1:14 PM  
Anonymous Go Joe! said...

"slidin' Biden has now dropped to 48%"

All right, Biden's getting into the Rump approval zone numbers now.

You must be so proud!

July 27, 2021 3:32 PM  
Anonymous Fewer red state voters in 2022. Is that really a problem? said...

MT. JULIET, Tenn. (WKRN) — The pastor of a Mt. Juliet church has threatened to kick out members of his congregation if they show up in masks amid a nationwide surge in COVID-19 cases fueled by the delta variant.

During service on Sunday at Global Vision Bible Church, Pastor Greg Locke told the crowd, “Don’t believe this delta variant nonsense. Stop it! Stop it!”

Locke said, “If they go through round two and you start showing up all these masks and all this nonsense, I’ll ask you to leave. I will ask you to leave. I am not playing these Democrat games up in this church. If you want to social distance, go to First Baptist Church, but don’t come to this one.”

“Bunch of pastors talking about how much they want to see people heal. They’re afraid to baptize people because of a Delta variant. I’m sick of it,” the pastor added.

During the start of the pandemic in March 2020, Pastor Locke announced he had no plans to stop holding service despite a warning from Gov. Bill Lee, who had urged churches to move their services online.

During a news briefing last week, Dr. Lisa Piercey, the Commissioner for the Tennessee Department of Health, said the state had experienced a more than 200% increase in overall COVID-19 cases since July 1, averaging more than 700 new cases per day over a 7 day period.

Dr. Piercey said 97% of all hospitalizations and more than 98% of deaths are residents who have not received the vaccine.

July 27, 2021 4:09 PM  
Anonymous even Europe is doing better than Slidin' Biden said...

Donald Trump got a vaccine out in eight months

Biden can't get 70% vaccinated

At least 70% of adults in the European Union have received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine

"Yes it is - it's up to roughly 50,000 cases per day - which sounds huge, until you realize that during Rump's last month in office, it frequently went above 250,000 cases per day."

the vaccine was still being produced then

Slidin' Biden has no such excuse

"They are actively discouraging their viewers from getting the vaccine"

that's what Slidin' Biden and Kamala did

"You must think most people in the country are as stupid and gullible"

they're a little slow but, based on the latest polls, they've become wise to Slidin' Biden

"That's why Biden got nearly 8 million more votes than Rump did."

Slidin' Biden hid in his basement

historically, the more people see of him, the less they like him

he has run for President many times and starts strong but then starts slidin'

the difference this time is he had an excuse not to go out much

"...And then you complain about being condescended to."

I don't recall complaining about that

could you give us an example?

(this should be good, folks!)

"If you don't want to be condescended to, stop engaging in such blatantly stupid fumb duckery."

I hate to be condescending but, are you afraid to say what you think?

July 27, 2021 9:09 PM  
Anonymous systemic racism is a conspiracy theory said...

"Keep trying to rewrite history, Orwell."

hate to break it you but the comments of Slidin' Biden and Crappy Kamala are documented

Big Brother never bothered with that!

July 28, 2021 5:29 AM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solution. Republicans are the problem. said...

"hate to break it you but the comments of Slidin' Biden and Crappy Kamala are documented"

Never said they weren't. You had to go back what, a year to find those comments? At the time, there was little reason to believe Rump's bragging about Operation Warp Speed and how fast it would work were little more than his braggadocio at best, or at worst, his pathological lying. There was every reason to be skeptical of his claims especially after he had spent months minimizing COVID's severity and claiming it would magically "go away, like a miracle."

Once some of the vaccines made it through the safety and efficacy trials whoever, they stopped questioning its utility and went all out to promote it. Democrats, unlike Republicans, have not spent months demonizing masks, vaccines, doctors, and even people who wear masks in an insane effort to keep people from getting vaccinated. This has extended the time COVID has to hang around, infect people, and mutate into even more dangerous strains.

Comparing Biden and Harris' incredulity then given Rump's record of lying and no working vaccine, compared to what the right wing is doing now that at least 150 million doses have gone into arms and safely shown its effectiveness in dropping infection rates is ridiculous.

It's just another obviously amateur propaganda attempt to shift blame where it doesn't belong. Only people with a propensity to believe Rump's lies about election steals are stupid enough to fall for that.

"Slidin' Biden hid in his basement"

It's called leading by example. Biden stayed safe at home as health officials recommended and avoided getting COVID. He kept his family safe too.

Rump ignored all the advice from doctors, got COVID, and so did his wife and kid... and other folks at his Rose Garden fiasco. What did he really expect to happen? Yes he survived, but with hundred of thousands of dollars of US taxpayer funded experimental treatments that most Americans could never afford. What kind of example is that to set?

July 28, 2021 10:31 AM  
Anonymous Republicans aren't the solution. Republicans are the problem. said...

"historically, the more people see of him, the less they like him"

The same is true of Rumplethinskin. He had 3 million fewer votes than Hillary in 2016, and nearly 8 million fewer than Biden in 2020 - making Biden the winner by the biggest voter margin in US history. That of course means that Rumpy was the "biggest loser."

"I don't recall complaining about that
could you give us an example?"

I was referring to this commentary:

"Like many of you, I have had a lot of misinformation thrown at me by politicians and the media during the pandemic. And, like many of you, I spent a lot of time sorting through it all, trying to make the best decision I could for myself and my family.

What I found was simple: Dr. Fauci and the “because science says so” crowd of arrogant, condescending politicians and bureaucrats were wrong about more than their mandates and shutdowns that have inflicted incalculable harm on our people and economy."

Since you habitually repeat all the standard right-wing talking points as they come out, I assumed you were repeating / believed/ promoted this one as well.

It wasn't apparent that at times you might be capable of independent thought.

Congratulations. Maybe there is hope for you yet.

July 28, 2021 10:40 AM  
Anonymous the Statute of Liberty is lucky to be made of stone said...

check it out

even after all this time, the highest death per million residents are STILL in New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, & Rhode Island

at least the people of New York are putting Cuomo on trial for his crimes

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/coronavirus/country/united-states/

July 28, 2021 9:34 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

At least 70% of adults in the European Union have received a dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Well that's no wonder.

There are fewer European MAGA-hatted science haters than American ones.

Polls: Europeans Favour Biden Over Trump by Wide Margins

America’s Image Abroad Rebounds With Transition From Trump to Biden

July 29, 2021 7:17 AM  
Anonymous watch out for Slidin' Biden and Crappy Kamala said...

"Never said they weren't. You had to go back what, a year to find those comments? At the time, there was little reason to believe Rump's bragging about Operation Warp Speed and how fast it would work were little more than his braggadocio at best, or at worst, his pathological lying. There was every reason to be skeptical of his claims especially after he had spent months minimizing COVID's severity and claiming it would magically "go away, like a miracle.""

actually, there was no reason, other than misguided faith in MSM, to doubt that effective vaccines were being developed

you frequently call Trump a liar but he follows through more than most politicians

you will notice, for example, that Biden promised to forgive 10K of student loans for each borrower

six months later, nothing

it's just but one example

Biden is a liar, indeed, one of his presidential campaigns derailed because of a plagiarism scandal

as for the statements about severity of the pandemic, his statements echoed his health adviser, the execrable Anthony Fauci

"Once some of the vaccines made it through the safety and efficacy trials whoever, they stopped questioning its utility and went all out to promote it."

the damage was already done. Slidin' Biden and Crappy Kamala acted as cheerleaders against the vaccines.

why?

politics is always more than the public welfare by Dems

case in point: the Biden administration has cut funding for charter schools by 10% and fought against school choice

they are more concerned with the political power of teacher unions than the welfare of students trapped in dangerous and ineffective inner-city schools

another case in point: the rush to score points by pushing defunding the police was more important than maintaining a safe environment for inner city residents

now, crime rates are soaring

instead of widespread shutdowns and ubiquitous mask and vaccine mandates, the focus should have always been on protecting the vulnerable population

if it had, by taking a few every obvious steps, a couple of hundred thousands lives would have been saved and we'd have a couple trillion in less debt

one more little Biden lie: when he came to office, he said his goal was 100 million shots in his first 100 days

when he said that, before inauguration day, a million people a day were already being vaccinated

right now, Slidin' Biden's FDA has yet to approve the vaccines for anything other than emergency use

no wonder younger adults are hesitant

they aren't at high risk and the government of Slidin' Biden and Crappy Kamala still hasn't fully approved the vaccine

July 30, 2021 5:43 AM  
Anonymous Look at all those lies our Rumpette commenter believes... check the facts said...

Young People Make Up Biggest Group of Newly Hospitalized COVID-19 Patients

-More and more young people are being hospitalized for COVID-19 as the Delta variant surges through the U.S.
-Experts say that initially a person’s age and underlying conditions were the biggest factors for if a person would need to be hospitalized, but now it’s vaccine status.
-Currently, people ages 18 to 49 make up the largest demographic of hospitalized people due to COVID-19, according to the CDC.

A 4th Mississippi child dies from COVID as delta variant creates issues for young people

Mississippi has had its fourth child die from COVID-19, State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs announced on Wednesday during a press conference.

Dobbs has spoken recently about data that shows that increasingly younger people are battling severe cases of the coronavirus. He said this week that 17 percent of those currently hospitalized with COVID are in the 40-49 age group.

The main reason for the increased danger to younger age groups is the delta variant of COVID-19, which has recently become the dominant strain in the U.S. after first wreaking havoc in India.

Dobbs said Wednesday that 93% of the recent COVID samples taken in the state are the delta variant.

“It’s highly contagious and most of the transmission is occurring from the unvaccinated,” Dobbs said. “Ninety-five percent of our new cases are unvaccinated.”

A doctor's warning about COVID: The delta variant is killing young and healthy people

A doctor in Arkansas, heartbroken by what he’s seeing in the COVID ward – the needless suffering and deaths of people who are unvaccinated – produced a video, posted on the hospital’s website – trying to convince those who are on the fence to get their shots.

Dr. Michael Bolding told CNN this is no longer a disease of the elderly and frail.

“You can’t be too healthy for this virus,” he said. “We are seeing people that crossfit on Tuesday and are on a ventilator on Friday. I can’t get the word out enough of what we’re seeing back here in these units.”

Dr. Bolding wants everyone to remember that the vaccine doesn’t work once you’re infected.

“I see someone daily for the last three weeks that is possibly dying, certainly very sick, that asks if they can get their vaccine,” he told CNN. “ And it is heartbreaking to tell them that that time has passed. That was five to six weeks ago to prevent this.”

Remember, it takes two doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine to get full protection against the nasty delta variant. Get your shot today, and you won’t have full protection for four weeks. Putting this off only increases your chances of getting COVID.

July 30, 2021 7:00 AM  
Anonymous GOP Gov. DeSantis wants to risk childrens lives by keeping them unmasked in school during delta variant surge in FL said...

DeSantis: Schools, feds won’t mandate masks. If they do, he’ll have Legislature ban them

As Florida schools return to in-person learning next month and COVID-19 cases surge, Gov. Ron DeSantis doubled down on his opposition to mask requirements Thursday, suggesting he would be willing to call a special session of the Legislature to outlaw it if the federal government imposes a mandate or local school districts defy him.

Florida virus cases soar, hospitals near last summer's peak

MIAMI (AP) — Hospital admissions of coronavirus patients continue to soar in Florida with at least two areas in the state surpassing the previous peaks of last summer's surge, prompting calls by local officials for the governor to declare an emergency.

A large hospital system in Jacksonville said its hospitals were at maximum capacity, its emergency centers also at a critical point as the state grappled with the new and more infectious delta variant of the COVID-19 virus.

In Brevard County, two hospitals began setting up treatment tents at its emergency departments. And at a Fort Lauderdale park, a long line of cars snaked around a testing site, recalling the first weeks of the pandemic last year.

Florida hospitals reported more than 8,900 patients with COVID-19 on Thursday, according to data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Florida Hospital Association said the state peaked at 10,179 cases last July.

July 30, 2021 7:11 AM  
Anonymous Looking forward to fewer Republicans at the polls thanks to COVID said...

"actually, there was no reason, other than misguided faith in MSM, to doubt that effective vaccines were being developed"

People didn't doubt effective vaccines could be developed. They doubted Trump's claims that his "Warp Speed" program could get it done safely in the time he claimed, and rightly so given his daily propensity for lying. That doubt feeds folks safety fears to this day.

"they are more concerned with the political power of teacher unions than the welfare of students trapped in dangerous and ineffective inner-city schools"

BS. There has been no rush by private entities to replace inner-city schools. Your point, as usual is moot. Private businesses aren't moving in to replace inner-city schools because they don't see any profit in it. A few years ago a number of for-profit schools had to be shut down because they had turned into diploma mills providing few job skills for their students but providing their owners with millions in student loan money - saddling their students with far more debt than they could hope to pay off with their worthless diploma.

"another case in point: the rush to score points by pushing defunding the police was more important than maintaining a safe environment for inner city residents"

You're lying again. Biden had to repeatedly come out and say he was NOT for defunding the police during his campaign, frustrating a number of people on the left, and he has maintained that position.

"you will notice, for example, that Biden promised to forgive 10K of student loans for each borrower"

Pay attention. His term isn't over yet, and he still has to get laws passed through Congress. Not easy when the minority party doesn't do much except grind law-making to a halt and come up with new ways to pretend the insurrection was just another day with tourists.

"instead of widespread shutdowns and ubiquitous mask and vaccine mandates, the focus should have always been on protecting the vulnerable population"

About half the states were run by republican governors and legislators. All but 4 out of 50 had a stay at home order - and all 4 of those were rural states. Rump did everything he could possibly do to avoid shutdowns. They happened anyway. Turns out lots of people don't want to die from an avoidable disease. Go figure. Stop pretending you had an idea that could have made things any better.

"right now, Slidin' Biden's FDA has yet to approve the vaccines for anything other than emergency use"

If Biden gets involved in pushing the FDA to approve things faster, that will only ADD to people's distrust of the vaccine - that's why people aren't taking it now - "it didn't go through the whole approval process! They pushed it through too fast! It can't be trusted!"

Biden pushing it faster is only going to make people trust it less. Biden needs to do what his predecessor DIDN'T do and keep out of the CDC and FDA's business and let them do everything they usually do with all the rigor it requires. Only when the vaccine has gone through the regular, complete, full approval process will we find out if the holdouts really meant what they said and get vaccinated, or if they were holding it out as an excuse. My money is betting that it's an excuse.

MILLIONS of people have been vaccinated with far, far fewer side effects and costs than getting the disease.

July 30, 2021 10:00 AM  
Anonymous You are free to die suckers!!! But give me your money first said...

Friend --

For more than a year, our freedom has been under a constant assault by the radical left. Now, they’re coming for your freedom again.

We’ve already heard the Biden administration and government bureaucrats like Dr. Fauci say they want to keep your kids as young as 3 years old in masks, despite what the data and evidence show. Now, Fauci and the CDC are scheming to impose mask mandates on adults – which would be another ridiculous flip-flop for Fauci.

Donate $25 today to support my mission to prevent lockdowns and protect our freedom!

The data proves that these lockdowns and mask mandates did NOT work. Lockdowns did not better protect our citizens. And the side effects of these lockdowns: Failing state economies.

As Democratic-run states continue to struggle even today in their economic recovery, Florida just experienced its 14th consecutive month of job growth.

Say ‘NO’ to Lockdowns And Stand Up For Freedom >>>

We CANNOT allow the corporate media and left-wing politicians to bully us into lockdowns and mask mandates again.

These politicians and government bureaucrats got a taste of power before and now they’re hungry for more.

Could you chip in $100, $50, or $25 to stand up against Fauci’s lockdowns and to protect our freedom?

These lockdown politicians are globalists who refuse to hold China accountable. They want to control you and if we don’t stand strong now, who knows what they’ll try to take away next.

I will continue fighting every day to preserve our freedom and liberty, but I need you to join me in our fight for freedom!

Sincerely,
Ron DeSantis

August 01, 2021 9:09 AM  
Anonymous Pesky facts said...

Compare NY and FL.

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/graphics/2021/07/29/cdc-mask-guidelines-map-high-covid-transmission-county/5400268001/

August 01, 2021 9:18 AM  
Anonymous Biden missed his immunization goal by a month while Rump missed his "Mexico will pay for the wall" goal by $15 Billion said...

Seventy percent of Americans have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccination, Cyrus Shahpar, the White House COVID-19 Data Director, said on Twitter Monday.

President Joe Biden had initially hoped the U.S. would reach this goal by July 4.

Shahpar said 468,000 new doses have been reported this week, including 320,000 newly vaccinated individuals. The seven-day average of newly vaccinated people in the U.S. is the highest since July 4.

"Let's continue working to get more eligible vaccinated!" he wrote.

The country hit the 70 percent rate close to a month after a goal set by the White House. Administration officials were not bothered that the country missed the initial vaccination goal.

"Well, we don't see it exactly like something went wrong. How we see it is: We set a bold, ambitious goal—something the president has done from the very beginning—and we are expected to meet that goal just a couple of weeks after July 4th," Press Secretary Jen Psaki said.


COMPARE TO:

“Unlike those who came before me, I kept my promises, and today we celebrated extraordinary milestone, the completion of the promised 450 miles of border wall,” Trump said in Alamo, Texas on Tuesday, surveying a half-mile stretch of new border wall. “Nobody realizes how big that is.”

The wall, which Trump famously said Mexico would pay for, was at the heart of Trump’s campaign to enact more restrictive immigration policies.

As of January 8, 2021the Trump administration has built just 47 miles of border wall where none existed before. President Barack Obama left office with 654 miles of border fencing in existence, according to a Government Accountability Office report from early 2017; Trump will leave with 701 miles of border fencing, according to CBP. The half-mile section that Trump visited today was completely new, the spokesman said.

He said during his 2016 campaign that it would cost $8 billion, or perhaps $12 billion, for his 1,000-mile wall. In fact, the federal government has allocated $15 billion for the 453 mile project, according to Time Magazine.

Mexico did not pay for the wall; its leaders have refused since Trump first made his promise. After Trump's inauguration, the president began suggesting that the U.S. would initially pay, but that Mexico would reimburse the U.S. for the wall.

That has also not happened. Taxpayers foot the bill for Trump's wall.

August 02, 2021 2:21 PM  
Anonymous Bad week in Trumpland signals hope for American democracy said...

On Tuesday, Susan Wright, the Texas congressional candidate that Trump endorsed, lost her primary to Jake Ellzey, whose campaign pitched his bipartisan appeal.

The same day, Merrick Garland’s DOJ advanced the cause of accountability by ruling that Trump acolyte Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) was not immune from liability in a lawsuit for allegedly inciting the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. That ruling ends the attempt that Trump’s lawyers had already foreshadowed to raise the same defense of the former president in Swalwell’s suit.

On Wednesday, even Mitch McConnell, “Dr. No” to Biden legislative success, greenlighted the procedural votes in favor of a $1 billion bipartisan infrastructure deal. McConnell did this in direct defiance of Trump’s messages threatening Republicans who signed on — 17 Republican Senators signed on anyway.

On Friday, the DOJ reversed Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin’s decision to withhold Trump’s tax returns from a congressional committee overseeing IRS audits and exploring legislation to correct. Garland’s reversal is another sign that Trump no longer can simply get away with making up his own rules and defying long standing norms.

Also on Friday, the Justice Department released to Congress seemingly incriminating notes made by former DOJ officials of phone solicitations from then-President Trump to support his “Big Lie.” The notes indicate that Trump told acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen all he had to do was say that the November election was “corrupt” — “leave the rest to me and the R[epublican] Congressmen.” This seems like a redo from Trump’s playbook with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in July 2019 — have someone announce an investigation of Biden so that Trump and his allies could blacken his rival’s name and prospects for success.

August 02, 2021 5:21 PM  
Anonymous Florida and Texas accounted for one-third of all new U.S. coronavirus cases last week said...

Two states, Texas and Florida, stand out as hot spots, accounting for a full third of all new cases nationwide last week, White House pandemic response coordinator Jeff Zients revealed during a Monday press briefing. Over the weekend, Florida had the unwelcome distinction of breaking a national record, reporting 21,000 new cases, the most for one day in any state since the pandemic began in early 2020.

“From the start, we’ve known this virus is unpredictable,” Zients said. Last month, President Biden all but declared victory over the coronavirus, saying in a July 4 speech that it “no longer paralyzes our nation.” Even then, however, the Delta variant was proliferating with increasing speed across the country. The president’s triumphalism has been called premature, giving people a false sense of security.

Republican governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas had not waited for Biden to herald the pandemic’s end, with DeSantis in particular having spent much of the summer basking in conservative adulation over his handling of the pandemic. Criticism of that approach has grown louder of late, especially as localities seek to impose new mask mandates in keeping with new guidance issued last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

DeSantis and Abbott have vigorously fought such mandates in recent days, reviving a long-simmering culture war. Public health experts, meanwhile, say that masks can help blunt the one advantage the Delta variant appears to enjoy: its increased transmissibility.

Overall, the coronavirus vaccines remain exceptionally good at preventing infection in the first place. And even when vaccinated people do become infected with the Delta variant, they tend to experience only mild illness. But they still can spread the coronavirus, as a recent case study of a Provincetown, Mass., cluster showed. It was the Provincetown cluster that forced the CDC to come out in favor of masking in areas of high or substantial viral activity.

Because most people in Provincetown were vaccinated, only seven out of about 900 people in the cluster ended up in the hospital. Even more significant, none died. “Our vaccines did exactly what they were supposed to do,” said CDC Director Rochelle Walensky on Monday. In addition, she noted that authorities there quickly reimposed a mask mandate, a decision that helped end the outbreak.

Vaccination rates in Provincetown are among the highest in Massachusetts, which is the second-most vaccinated state in the nation after Vermont. And there appeared to be little resistance to masking among its residents and visitors.

That doesn’t make Provincetown an especially instructive case when it comes to tracking the progress of the pandemic nationwide. Zients said that the seven states with the lowest vaccination rates (Alabama, Mississippi, Wyoming, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho and Georgia) account for 8.5 percent of the U.S. population but 17 percent of all new cases.

August 03, 2021 6:49 AM  
Anonymous 'We have children in ICU': Schools implement mask mandates even as some states impose bans. said...

The U.S. Department of Education's roadmap for return to school includes guidance for wearing masks that in many school districts is pitting educators against state officials.

Among the roadmap’s recommendations: That districts follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s school masking guidance, released last week in the face of rising cases attributed to the delta variant. But some states have passed laws banning schools from following this guidance, and authorities in some other states say they won't enforce it.

One district in Arizona, where lawmakers have prohibited mask mandates, announced June 30 that it would require masks indoors. Phoenix Union High School District opened its doors to masked students Monday, and Tuesday, Phoenix Elementary School District followed suit.

“Let’s all do our part to help protect our children, our employees, and their families, by wearing face coverings at schools,” a Phoenix Elementary School District news release said. “We must take every precaution to protect the lives of those entrusted to us.”

In Florida, Duval County Public Schools will have a mask mandate with an opt-out option, even as Gov. Ron DeSantis threatens district funding if schools issue one. In Tennessee, Shelby County Schools will keep its mask mandate in place, even start school remotely depending on cases this fall. The state's House speaker has threatened to call a special session prohibiting it.

And a contingent of legislative Democrats from Oklahoma is calling for a special legislative session to repeal a new law that prevents school districts from imposing mask mandates unless a state of emergency is in effect. Tulsa Public Schools has required masks at all times for students and staff, regardless of vaccination status.

“What has to happen before we take COVID seriously?" said Democratic House Minority Leader Emily Virgin. "We have children in ICU."

August 04, 2021 8:13 AM  
Anonymous How to knot and tuck a disposable face mask said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzTAZDsNBe0

August 04, 2021 5:12 PM  
Anonymous Rump and his lawyers lose again said...

Attorneys who filed a lawsuit in Colorado seeking to overturn the results of the 2020 election have been sanctioned (legalese for punished) by the Judge overseeing that proceeding.

In a scathing 68-page opinion, Magistrate Judge N. Reid Neureiter found that the lawyers made little effort to corroborate information they had included in the suit, which argued there had been a vast national conspiracy to steal the election from President Donald Trump.

Neureiter ordered that the duo [of Trump attorneys] must pay the legal fees of all the individuals and companies they had sued — 18 separate entities in all — as a way to deter future similar cases.

Holding Trump’s lawyers accountable with sanctions is just as important as bringing criminal charges against the violent insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021. After all, all of Trump’s lawsuits were trying to accomplish the same thing as the insurrectionists — overturning the results of a democratic election. The lawsuits were fueled by the same conspiracy theories, and the same sense of arrogance and privilege. If we believe that “the pen is mightier than the sword,” then we should treat these lawsuits as just as serious of a threat to our democracy as the January 6th insurrection.

Just as the insurrectionists no doubt felt they would face no consequences for their violent actions because they are “real ‘Muricans” (read: white and Christian), so too Trump’s lawyers no doubt felt they would get away with filing lawsuits with zero factual or legal support, either because they are rich, white lawyers who can get away with these things by default, or because they were acting at the behest of a very powerful person (Trump), or whatever was going through their minds when they signed their names on these lawsuits.

So here are the principles being validated today: (a) filing a lawsuit with no factual or legal support to overturn the results of a democratic election is not permitted in the rules of our legal system; (b) doing so at the behest of someone who was at the time President of the United States provides no cover or excuse; and (c) no one is above the law.

With Giuliani losing his law license and under active criminal investigation, other Trump attorneys likewise in the crosshairs of Judges across this nation, more than 600 individuals charged with crimes related to January 6th, and Trump himself under active criminal investigation, the walls are closing in on the network of individuals who in 2020 and 2021 attempted to launch a coup against our democracy.

August 05, 2021 12:37 PM  
Anonymous “Death by DeSantis” Threatens Florida as Covid Numbers Spike said...

As the governor jets around the country promising to lead the fight against public health mandates, Florida sees record levels of infection.

Florida reported a jaw-dropping 21,683 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday, the highest single-day total since the pandemic began. The new figure is 10 percent higher than for the previous worst day, January 7, 2021, which occurred at the peak of last winter’s devastating surge.

On Sunday, the data was even more chilling. Florida broke the previous one-day record for hospitalizations. The old record was set on July 23, 2020, during a surge that occurred months before people began to get vaccinations for the virus. While those who have been vaccinated are generally protected against severe illness, less than 50 percent of Floridians are fully inoculated, and some regions of the state are seeing high levels of vaccine hesitancy—along with outright rejection of public health mandates.

On Monday, headlines announced that Florida was leading the nation in per capita Covid-19 hospitalizations, with the Associated Press reporting that hospitals around the state were “having to put emergency room visitors in beds in hallways and others document a noticeable drop in the age of patients.” Indeed, noted Jason Salemi, an associate professor of epidemiology at the University of South Florida, the state now has the highest per capita rate in the nation for pediatric hospitalizations.

This is a crisis.

Yet Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is refusing to act to protect the health and safety of Floridians. Over the weekend, the Orlando Sentinel revealed that DeSantis has stopped traveling around the state to push for people to get vaccinated. “Despite surge in cases,” the front-page headline announced, “governor is no longer encouraging inoculation.” The governor is also aggressively opposing mask mandates and other public-health interventions.

DeSantis has blamed the current spike in Covid cases on hot weather. Because summer temperatures are high in the sunshine State, the governor claims, Floridians are spending too much time in air-conditioned buildings where the disease spreads more easily—rather than getting outside in the fresh air.

At the same time, DeSantis is pushing for public school students to return to their classrooms in, um, air-conditioned buildings. And he’s promising to block any formal attempt to have them wear masks in those buildings—going so far as to say that he would defund districts that try to require masking.

Confused?

Don’t be. It's political. DeSantis is running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination—if his mentor and ally Donald Trump lets him. And if Trump decides that he wants to inflict himself on the nation again, DeSantis wants to join the GOP ticket as the vice presidential nominee.

August 06, 2021 4:59 PM  
Anonymous No surprise here! said...

Ex-Newsmax Host, Dick Farrel, Who Attacked ‘Lying Freak’ Dr. Fauci Over ‘Scamdemic’ Has Died Of COVID

August 08, 2021 10:27 AM  
Anonymous remember: science created COVID-19 said...

Dems think they can do as they wish by abusing the reconciliation process. Surprise! They need 60 votes to raise the debt limit that much!!

LOL!

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/congress-mcconnell-blasts-democratic-spending-package

Democrat Man o' the Year in 2020, has no friends and may go to jail!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9876625/PIERS-MORGAN-rats-deserting-sinking-ship-Gov-Cuomo-time-walk-plank.html

Democrat runner up Man o' the Year in 2020, has no friends and and is leaving politics involuntarily!

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gavin-newsoms-anti-recall-ads-are-everywhere-but-dont-seem-to-be-helping/ar-AAN6nhm

Kamala Harris: LOL!!!!!!!!!

https://nypost.com/2021/08/08/kamala-harris-is-utterly-flubbing-her-job-as-veep/

Dems tampered with 2020 ballots in Georgia:

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-ballot-adjudication-spoiled

Dems resist democracy:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/texas-house-democrats-still-absent-as-new-special-session-begins/

During a closed-door lunch last week with some of his most vulnerable incumbents, House Democrats’ campaign chief delivered a blunt warning: If the midterms were held now, they would lose the majority.

At that grave meeting, New York Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, with “new polling that showed Democrats falling behind Republicans by a half-dozen points on a generic ballot in battleground districts” in hand, called on Democrats to “course-correct” before 2022 by better promoting of the Biden agenda (which, we’re amusingly told, “polls strongly”). Democrats plan to respond to these headwinds with a “messaging blitz” that will highlight the White House’s “ambitious plans to juice the economy” and “better explain what Democrats have been doing to help the Covid-ravaged” country.

LOL!!!!!!!!!

Merrick Garland!:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/devin-nunes-john-durham-report-merrick-garland-bury

ROFL and LOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

August 09, 2021 8:28 PM  
Anonymous homosexuality never produces life, two of 'em ain't ever a marriage said...

the latest IPCC political advocacy report on climate change is out and the media is trying to incite a panic

here's a couple of interesting points not noted by the MSM complex:

1. it expresses "low confidence" that Antarctic sea ice will melt

2. it expresses "low confidence" in "long-term trends in the frequency of all-category tropical cyclones"

keep that in mind next time the media claims some hurricane is proof of global warming

the IPCC report is a pure political advocacy statement

it has no objectivity

as Al Gore admitted about the 2018 version, it is "torqued up" to "get the attention of policymakers around the world"

thanks, Al

we needed that!!

August 10, 2021 6:15 AM  
Anonymous government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem said...

Did you know that mask mandates have been restored because of the random promiscuity of homosexuals?

At the very top of the COVID-19 empire is Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. He’s part of the cabal that has suppressed the truth about Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine/Zithromax/zinc, which are cheap, reliable COVID-19 treatments endorsed by many doctors. As thousands died from COVID-19 waiting for a vaccine, the government, media, and Big Tech suppressed information that could have saved countless lives.

This is nothing short of criminal. There are also disturbing questions about Dr. Fauci’s role in U.S. funding to the Wuhan lab for “gain-of-function” research to make coronaviruses more deadly.

For more bad medicine, check out Dr. Fauci’s April 15, 2020, interview with Vanity Fair. He said he saw nothing wrong with people meeting potential partners through a dating app like Tinder or Grindr. These apps are famous for facilitating anonymous, promiscuous sex of the kind that spreads STDs such as syphilis, gonorrhea, HPV, Hepatitis, and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

The nation’s top doctor wants us all in masks, shots, and mandates over a virus with a 99-plus percent recovery rate. But when it comes to dates with strangers, well, that’s a different story: “If you’re looking for a friend, sit in a room and put a mask on, and you know, chat a bit,” he told Vanity Fair. “If you want to go a bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding a risk.”

In July, some people went a “bit more intimate” in Provincetown, Massachusetts. You might have heard about the fallout – the CDC recommended re-masking the entire nation because of these “breakthrough cases.”

The CDC based its finding on “469 cases of Covid associated with multiple summer events and large public gatherings held in July … in Provincetown,” as reported on NBC and CNBC. “Approximately three-quarters, or 74%, of the cases occurred in fully vaccinated people who had completed a two-dose course of the mRNA vaccines or received a single shot of Johnson & Johnson’s.”

The Massachusetts cases were “a pivotal discovery leading to CDC’s updated mask recommendation,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said.

Now for the real story, as told by Robert Stacy McCain in the American Spectator: “Provincetown is to gay men what Mecca is to Muslims, and the annual week-long gathering of thousands … who pack into crowded bars immediately follows the Fourth of July holiday,” Mr. McCain wrote. “So this ‘Cape Cod beach outbreak,’ to use the euphemism of that ABC News headline, was atypical to say the least, and certainly a poor test case to justify inflicting renewed mask mandates on the entire nation.”

Meanwhile, in Illinois, Democrat Gov. Jay Robert (J.B.) Pritzker signed a law on July 27 repealing criminal penalties for people who knowingly transmit HIV to others. He said it would reduce the “stigma” and aid in establishing LGBTQ “equality.” The law had made it a felony to engage in unprotected sex, donate blood or tissue or share non-sterile intravenous needles while being knowingly infected with HIV. Pure bigotry, right? Who cares about those who get infected?

In New York, Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio, who might as well replace the city seal with a hammer and sickle, announced that everyone would be required to show proof of vaccination to dine inside restaurants, go to a gym or attend a play. “Enforcement” will begin Sept. 13.

Ruth Institute Director Jennifer Roback Morse summarized the absurdity of all this: “In Illinois, you can knowingly spread this deadly STD without being penalized, while in New York, you can be kept out of restaurants and denied employment for refusing to get vaccinated. This shows, once again, that advocates of the Sexual Revolution allow nothing to stand in the way of high-risk activity, as long as it’s sexual activity. Shopping, eating, and going to the movies, not so much.”

August 10, 2021 6:54 AM  
Anonymous fortunately, Obama and Garland were stopped so we have a terrific Supreme Court now!!! said...

for years, Einstein's theories on physics have held up to empirical and proven astonishingly precise

so too, Reagan's political theories

government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem

the COVID-19 pandemic has proven this again

the US government funded Chinese scientists to mess around with viruses and they were sloppy in handling safety protocols

private enterprise to the rescue: Trump removed restrictions and allowed the private sector to produce a vaccine at warp speed

government causes problem

private enterprise solves it

pretty simple, huh?

August 10, 2021 9:49 AM  
Anonymous Apparently GOP Gov. DeSantis wants school children in Florida to be "free" to get sick by attending school unmasked and unvaccinated said...

Gov. Ron DeSantis is waging a war on school mask mandates — and is threatening to withhold paychecks of school-board members who defy his mask ban

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is threatening to withhold salaries from school-board members who dare to defy his mask ban.

The governor's threat follows an executive order he signed July 31 saying mask mandates were prohibited in Florida schools. The executive order went into effect immediately and said schools risked losing funding if they imposed face-covering requirements.

Now DeSantis is taking it a step further.

On Monday, he released a statement to CBS Miami saying school-board members and superintendents who defied his executive order would face "financial consequences."

"The State Board of Education could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school-board members, as a narrowly tailored means to address the decision-makers who led to the violation of law," the statement said.

The statement added that the governor's priorities were "protecting parents' rights and ensuring that every student has access to a high-quality education that meets their unique needs."

Miami-Dade County Public Schools' superintendent, Alberto Carvalho, responded to DeSantis in a separate statement to CBS Miami that the schools in his district — the fourth-largest in the US — would follow a "process" in consultation with public-health experts to decide whether students should wear masks.

"At no point shall I allow my decision to be influenced by a threat to my paycheck, a small price to pay considering the gravity of this issue and the potential impact to the health and well-being of our students and dedicated employees," Carvalho told CBS Miami.

August 10, 2021 9:56 AM  
Anonymous THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION -- JULY 2021 said...



Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 943,000 in July, and the unemployment rate
declined by 0.5 percentage point to 5.4 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
reported today. Notable job gains occurred in leisure and hospitality, in local government
education, and in professional and business services.


August 10, 2021 11:08 AM  
Anonymous Happily married heterosexuals don't obsess over gay marriages said...

"private enterprise to the rescue: Trump removed restrictions and allowed the private sector to produce a vaccine at warp speed

government causes problem

private enterprise solves it

pretty simple, huh?"

I noticed you conveniently left out the part where government used taxpayer dollars to fund the research, pay for the products, transportation, and man vaccination centers.

That makes it really look like government works, even if you avoid calling it "socialism."

But then the US government has been shoveling BILLIONS of dollars to the Military Industrial Complex for decades to keep them afloat.



August 10, 2021 11:50 AM  
Anonymous face facts: two homosexuals don't reproduce so they aren't a marriage said...

"I noticed you conveniently left out the part where government used taxpayer dollars to fund the research, pay for the products, transportation, and man vaccination centers."

LOL!

not long ago you bunch of hypocrites were pointing out that Pfizer, first out of the gate, refuses governmental assistance

btw, the grim reaper of Albany has resigned

his brother, the violent Fredo, is next!

August 10, 2021 12:55 PM  
Anonymous FL parents are "free" to sue GOP Gov. Dastardly DeSantis for interfering with their children's ability to be educated safely. said...

Florida parents are now suing DeSantis. At least one mom has said she “never envisioned” that the governor “would actively be trying to harm my child,” and lamented correctly that limits on mask mandates are interfering with her son’s ability to get educated safely.

Anyone who has taken a young child to a camp or gathering this summer has witnessed how children playing together continue to drift inevitably into very close contact. It’s particularly ludicrous and venal to bar local officials from acting to defend these children from spread.

August 10, 2021 1:01 PM  
Anonymous Duh said...



"Pfizer, first out of the gate, refuses governmental assistance"

Pfizer manufactures its vaccine but has not administered a single shot for anything other than research purposes.

August 10, 2021 1:05 PM  
Anonymous Dem monopoly control of inner cities has led to poverty and racism said...

the point remains that government produced the COVID-19 virus by playing God with viral DNA

and private enterprise solved the problem by devising a vaccine

if you think government deserves a bunch of credit for distributing the vaccine, I appreciate the laugh

the whole thing was a classic Keystone Cops procedure

August 10, 2021 1:23 PM  
Anonymous Reality said...

Al Gore lost the election by 537 votes.

Hillary Clinton lost the election by 77,000 votes.

Trump lost the election by 7 million votes.

August 10, 2021 1:31 PM  
Anonymous Merrick Garland ... LOL said...

"Al Gore lost the election by 537 votes.

Hillary Clinton lost the election by 77,000 votes.

Trump lost the election by 7 million votes."

all three pouted that the election was stolen from them

in Trump's case, assuming the numbers are accurate, he got the second largest number of votes in history

and, because of the pandemic, the election integrity is not reliable

most controls were eliminated because of falsely claimed risks

August 10, 2021 1:48 PM  
Anonymous Go figure said...

"all three pouted that the election was stolen from them"

Yet only one encouraged a mob to march to the Capitol Building to try to stop the certification of the vote.

August 10, 2021 1:56 PM  
Anonymous Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy said...

Al Gore had about half a million more people vote for him than Bush did.

Hillary had about 2.8 million more people vote her than Rumplethinskin.

Biden had nearly 7 million more votes than the Cheeto Benito.

Only in the US, which still somehow calls itself a "democracy" would the person with fewer votes "win" the election. All thanks to the "Electoral College" which was carefully designed to keep white slave-owner power on par with with the north, while not allowing black people to vote (see article excerpt in next post).

"in Trump's case, assuming the numbers are accurate, he got the second largest number of votes in history

Which of course, makes him "The Biggest Loser."

"and, because of the pandemic, the election integrity is not reliable
most controls were eliminated because of falsely claimed risks"

That's the narrative that the authoritarian right keeps pushing, but multiple recounts in multiple states, careful checks of the voting records and addresses, and no less than 5 dozen court cases (thrown out due to lack of evidence) have uncovered NO evidence of widespread Democratic fraud. Ironically, as if proving Republican's penchant for projection, a number of Republican voters have been found guilty of casting votes for a recently deceased relative.

The biggest fraud of the 2020 election was Trump's and the right wing media continuous claims of widespread voter fraud - helping to feed than anger and resentment that fed right into Rump's plans for stealing the vote on Jan 6.

No these false claims are feeding nationwide efforts to make it more difficult and less likely for minorities to vote - continuing America's legacy of white domination.





August 10, 2021 3:03 PM  
Anonymous The Electoral College’s Racist Origins said...

More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.

By Wilfred Codrington III

"For centuries, white votes have gotten undue weight, as a result of innovations such as poll taxes and voter-ID laws and outright violence to discourage racial minorities from voting. (The point was obvious to anyone paying attention: As William F. Buckley argued in his essay “Why the South Must Prevail,” white Americans are “entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally,” anywhere they are outnumbered because they are part of “the advanced race.”) But America’s institutions boosted white political power in less obvious ways, too, and the nation’s oldest structural racial entitlement program is one of its most consequential: the Electoral College.

"Commentators today tend to downplay the extent to which race and slavery contributed to the Framers’ creation of the Electoral College, in effect whitewashing history: Of the considerations that factored into the Framers’ calculus, race and slavery were perhaps the foremost."

Of course, the Framers had a number of other reasons to engineer the Electoral College. Fearful that the president might fall victim to a host of civic vices—that he could become susceptible to corruption or cronyism, sow disunity, or exercise overreach—the men sought to constrain executive power consistent with constitutional principles such as federalism and checks and balances. The delegates to the Philadelphia convention had scant conception of the American presidency—the duties, powers, and limits of the office. But they did have a handful of ideas about the method for selecting the chief executive. When the idea of a popular vote was raised, they griped openly that it could result in too much democracy. With few objections, they quickly dispensed with the notion that the people might choose their leader."

"But delegates from the slaveholding South had another rationale for opposing the direct election method, and they had no qualms about articulating it: Doing so would be to their disadvantage. Even James Madison, who professed a theoretical commitment to popular democracy, succumbed to the realities of the situation. The future president acknowledged that “the people at large was in his opinion the fittest” to select the chief executive. And yet, in the same breath, he captured the sentiment of the South in the most “diplomatic” terms:

"There was one difficulty however of a serious nature attending an immediate choice by the people. The right of suffrage was much more diffusive in the Northern than the Southern States; and the latter could have no influence in the election on the score of the Negroes. The substitution of electors obviated this difficulty and seemed on the whole to be liable to fewest objections."

August 10, 2021 3:05 PM  
Anonymous The Electoral College’s Racist Origins said...

"Behind Madison’s statement were the stark facts: The populations in the North and South were approximately equal, but roughly one-third of those living in the South were held in bondage. Because of its considerable, nonvoting slave population, that region would have less clout under a popular-vote system. The ultimate solution was an indirect method of choosing the president, one that could leverage the three-fifths compromise, the Faustian bargain they’d already made to determine how congressional seats would be apportioned. With about 93 percent of the country’s slaves toiling in just five southern states, that region was the undoubted beneficiary of the compromise, increasing the size of the South’s congressional delegation by 42 percent. When the time came to agree on a system for choosing the president, it was all too easy for the delegates to resort to the three-fifths compromise as the foundation. The peculiar system that emerged was the Electoral College."

"Right from the get-go, the Electoral College has produced no shortage of lessons about the impact of racial entitlement in selecting the president. History buffs and Hamilton fans are aware that in its first major failure, the Electoral College produced a tie between Thomas Jefferson and his putative running mate, Aaron Burr. What’s less known about the election of 1800 is the way the Electoral College succeeded, which is to say that it operated as one might have expected, based on its embrace of the three-fifths compromise. The South’s baked-in advantages—the bonus electoral votes it received for maintaining slaves, all while not allowing those slaves to vote—made the difference in the election outcome. It gave the slaveholder Jefferson an edge over his opponent, the incumbent president and abolitionist John Adams. To quote Yale Law’s Akhil Reed Amar, the third president “metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.” That election continued an almost uninterrupted trend of southern slaveholders and their doughfaced sympathizers winning the White House that lasted until Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860."

"In 1803, the Twelfth Amendment modified the Electoral College to prevent another Jefferson-Burr–type debacle. Six decades later, the Thirteenth Amendment outlawed slavery, thus ridding the South of its windfall electors. Nevertheless, the shoddy system continued to cleave the American democratic ideal along racial lines. In the 1876 presidential election, the Democrat Samuel Tilden won the popular vote, but some electoral votes were in dispute, including those in—wait for it—Florida. An ad hoc commission of lawmakers and Supreme Court justices was empaneled to resolve the matter. Ultimately, they awarded the contested electoral votes to Republican Rutherford B. Hayes, who had lost the popular vote. As a part of the agreement, known as the Compromise of 1877, the federal government removed the troops that were stationed in the South after the Civil War to maintain order and protect black voters."

August 10, 2021 3:08 PM  
Anonymous if you go chasing rabbits, the Dems are gonna fall said...

"Yet only one encouraged a mob to march to the Capitol Building to try to stop the certification of the vote"

Al really didn't have the ability to do that

no one was ever that wild about him

Hillary did worse

she paid to plant a false story that our elected President was a foreign spy

the investigation basically thwarted the will of the people for most of that Presidency and was as vicious as any Big Lie

she should have been tried

as for January 6, protest is as American as it gets

there is no proof Trump encouraged the break-in conducted by a few hundred extremists

but the reason those extremists could get as mush traction as they did is because election integrity measures were obliterated in the name of COVID safety

ostensibly, people could stand in line at Costco and show ID but not to vote

please...

"Al Gore had about half a million more people vote for him than Bush did.

Hillary had about 2.8 million more people vote her than Rumplethinskin.

Biden had nearly 7 million more votes than the Cheeto Benito."

interesting...your comrade earlier had different numbers

you guys aren't making this up, are you?

well, clearly, one of you are

"Only in the US, which still somehow calls itself a "democracy" would the person with fewer votes "win" the election. All thanks to the "Electoral College" which was carefully designed to keep white slave-owner power on par with with the north, while not allowing black people to vote"

this is the kind of crap causing a backlash across the country right now

actually, anti-slavery forces were not in favor of blacks voting in the South because that would increase the relative power of Southern states

you should try reading some history

when you're not wasted

"Which of course, makes him "The Biggest Loser.""

only in the land of hookah-smoking caterpillars

the pills you take, don't do anything at all

"That's the narrative that the authoritarian right keeps pushing, but multiple recounts in multiple states, careful checks of the voting records and addresses, and no less than 5 dozen court cases (thrown out due to lack of evidence) have uncovered NO evidence of widespread Democratic fraud. Ironically, as if proving Republican's penchant for projection, a number of Republican voters have been found guilty of casting votes for a recently deceased relative."

of course the fraud can't be found

the rules were changed to eliminate integrity measures

Biden may have won

but, there's no way to know

that won't be a problem next time

":The biggest fraud of the 2020 election was Trump's and the right wing media continuous claims of widespread voter fraud - helping to feed than anger and resentment that fed right into Rump's plans for stealing the vote on Jan 6."

but the reason "anger and resentment" could get as mush traction as it did is because election integrity measures were obliterated in the name of COVID safety

"No these false claims are feeding nationwide efforts to make it more difficult and less likely for minorities to vote - continuing America's legacy of white domination."

this is fiction

there are no election laws that minorities are unable to follow

"The Electoral College’s Racist Origins"

this is the kind of crap causing a backlash across the country right now

please, please

keep it up!

August 10, 2021 8:31 PM  
Anonymous Republicans are trying to destroy our democracy said...

"there is no proof Trump encouraged the break-in conducted by a few hundred extremists"

There you go denying reality again. He spent months telling the country the only way he could lose was if there was a bunch of voter fraud. When the predicted loss came around, he then claimed there was voter fraud. Then he and his cronies held a rally 2 months AFTER the election - on what day? Why the very morning the election of the new president was to be certified. And then the blowhards whipped the crowd into a "patriotic" and treasonous frenzy.

Weeks before, Rump had changed the guy who was in charge of calling the National Guard in, and he changed the rules so that only he could make the final decision.

"the rules were changed to eliminate integrity measures"

No they weren't. They were changed to make it easier to deliver your vote to the registrar while avoiding contact with other people - extra boxes and hours to drop off your envelopes and such. The integrity measures still worked quite well, otherwise they wouldn't have found those Republicans voting for their dead relatives or cleared up the confusion about the PO boxes.



The insurrection was one of the few things that Rump did a good job of planning during his presidency. Like most of what he did though, it failed.

"but the reason those extremists could get as mush traction as they did is because election integrity measures were obliterated in the name of COVID safety"

The only reason you think integrity measures were obliterated is that you fell hook, line, and sinker for the right-wing media campaign promoting that. In case after case, the "evidence" Rump's lawyers came up with was found fraudulent or incorrect. Thousands of "questionable" addresses turned out to be PO boxes for military personnel - something those lawyers could have found out themselves if they had bothered to do 10 minutes of checking themselves. Instead some of them are facing charges for their naked abuse of the justice system. The fraud was what Rump's team did to the American justice system and its citizen, not what the voters did.

You will no doubt keep insisting there was widespread voter fraud because that's necessary to keep the gullible right-wing base angry and motivated - not only to vote but overturn the election if it doesn't go their way. But most of America is on to your blatant lies, and "Release the Kraken" will now be forever known as right-wing bluster for a campaign full of hot air.

"you should try reading some history"

I have, and it is easy to tell when apologists for the Confederacy are trying to re-write it trying to white-wash events and reframe them to make themselves look better. It started shortly after the war, involved the United Daughters of the Confederacy and continues to this day, where many people in the south refer to the Civil War as "The War of Northern Aggression."




August 10, 2021 9:33 PM  
Anonymous Republicans don't really believe in the Constitution said...

"Biden may have won
but, there's no way to know"

Actually there is, and was. Most if not all of the swing states had multiple recounts of the votes. They didn't change the outcome.

"Biden had nearly 7 million more votes than the Cheeto Benito."
interesting...your comrade earlier had different numbers
you guys aren't making this up, are you?
well, clearly, one of you are"

Clearly, you did not catch on to the fact that the first poster was talking about the number of votes that made the difference in the Electoral College count, while the second was referring to the votes cast by all of the voters.

The numbers aren't made up, you can google them for yourself. But obviously I shouldn't have expected you to figure out that difference - you're not sharpest tool in the shed.

"ostensibly, people could stand in line at Costco and show ID but not to vote"

What a number of states have done has gone WAY beyond ID - that's not the issue - but that's what the right keeps distracting people with.

Republicans in Georgia wanted to cut down black votes by attacking "Souls to the Polls":

The voting initiative is popularly known as "Souls to the Polls": an effort, usually involving African-American communities, in which church congregations attend Sunday services, and then collectively go vote. It's been a successful initiative for years, which has made an important difference in countless elections.

It's also been a target for voter-suppression campaigns. In Georgia, for example, where Republican officials at the state level continue to explore ways to make it more difficult to vote, legislators recently considered a measure that would prohibit early voting on Sundays. As part of the U.S. Senate's debate over the Democrats' "For the People Act," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) yesterday condemned the thinly veiled proposal.

"Why did the Georgia legislature only pick Sundays to say there should be no early voting on Sunday?" Schumer asked. "We know why. It's because that's the day African Americans vote in the 'Souls to the Polls' operation where they go from church to vote. It's despicable."

Georgia's SB202 made it a crime to hand out food or water to people standing in line to vote - you know, people who have been standing in line for hours because they live in a populous city and Republicans have minimized the number of polling places there to make it into a day-long ordeal. Meanwhile, in rural Republican areas, there are plenty of polls so people can get in an out in a few minutes.

It isn't about ID - it's about making it difficult and time-consuming to vote. Time is not something low-wage workers can afford to lose.

August 10, 2021 10:03 PM  
Anonymous Drip drip drip said...

The release of a fifth superseding indictment against the Oath Keepers involved in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection—adding two more men, one from Georgia and another from Florida, to what is now a total of 16 co-conspirators in the case, as well as further charges against one of the women already indicted—is stark testament to how the evidence against the Patriot organization’s members for their key role in the attack on Congress that day has been mounting steadily, doubtlessly aided by the participants who have turned state’s evidence.

That mountain of evidence also will affect the case’s timeline: It appears that the earliest the case involving these 16 codefendants will proceed to trial will be sometime in January 2022, according to their attorneys at a hearing before U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta on Tuesday. They say that length of time is necessary to comb through the massive piles of evidence and prepare for trial.

The two men added to the indictment were David Moerschel, 43, of Punta Gorda, Florida, and Brian Ulrich, 43, of Guyton, Georgia. Both men participated in different components of the Oath Keepers’ coordinated assault on the Capitol.

Moerschel had been previously arrested in July on charges of obstruction of Congress, conspiracy, and unlawful entry, but that case now will be subsumed as part of the larger Oath Keepers conspiracy case. The list of charges against him centers around his involvement in the planning for the assault, and then his participation in the group’s tactical “stack” formation on the steps of the Capitol that played a key role in the building being breached.

The only new face among the list of co-conspirators was Ulrich’s since he had not been previously charged. He was among the Oath Keepers who careered wildly through Washington streets from the Ellipse to the Capitol in golf carts, and then participated in the breach of the building on its east side.

Ulrich, the indictment alleges, told his co-conspirators that he intended to bring a backpack full of ammunition.

“The more patriots the merrier ‘gonna be wild,’” he wrote, later adding:

"Someone can tell me if I’m crazy but I’m planning on having a backpack for regular use and then a separate backpack with my ammo load out with some basics I can juyst switch too is shit truly the fan blades. … I will be the guy running around with a budget AR."

Both men, it states, participated heavily in pre-planning for the assault. Moerschel attended a number of meetings planning for Jan. 6, including a GoToMeeting titled “florida dc op planning chat” on Dec. 31, 2020, and “dc planning call” on Jan. 3. He also allegedly joined an invitation-only encrypted Signal group message titled “OK FL DC OP Jan 6” for communicating their plans. Likewise, Ulrich participated in a Signal group message titled “DC OP: Jan 6 21,” which is where he informed them of his backpack plans.

The indictment also added charges for another previously arrested defendant, Laura Steele, 52, of Thomasville, North Carolina, who now faces one count of civil disorder and tampering with documents, and aiding and abetting for having destroyed evidence after the event.

On the day after the insurrection, Steele allegedly used the backyard burn-pit of her brother, Graydon Young, to burn the clothing they wore into the Capitol and other evidence of their involvement. Young is one of several Oath Keepers who has turned state’s evidence in the case.

As Marcy Wheeler observes, Young’s plea bargain in that case negated a charge of damaging government property, which carried a potential terrorism enhancement upon conviction. In exchange, he wound up having to provide evidence and testimony against his own sister. As a result, she is now included in all the counts involving civil disorder charges in the new indictment.

August 11, 2021 10:52 AM  
Anonymous Maskless dastardly "DeSantis will eventually prevail." said...

Authorities in central Florida say the state's latest Covid-19 surge is having a deadly impact on the state's first responders, claiming three of the public servants' lives last week.

The three men — a firefighter, a sheriff's deputy and a police officer — all died within three days of one another, NBC affiliate WESH of Orlando reported.

Driver Engineer Scott Allender died Tuesday "after battling COVID-19 since early July," the Melbourne Fire Department said in a statement.

"Scott Allender was an important and vibrant member of the Melbourne Fire Department and will be dearly missed by all who knew him," Fire Chief Chuck Bogle said. "Our deepest sympathy is extended to the Allender family."

Craig Seijos, 54, a deputy with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, died Thursday.

The sheriff's department said in a statement that Seijos had worked there for nearly three decades.

"Craig dedicated much of his life to serving the residents of Orange County," Sheriff John Mina said. "We will always be grateful for his service and he will never be forgotten.

"Deputy Seijos was a dedicated family man who adored his wife and five adult children," Mina said. "His colleagues say he was an extremely generous person and was always willing to donate to a good cause. Deputy Seijos also never shied away from a healthy debate."

And the Port Orange Police Department posted that Officer Justin White, 39, died from Covid-19 on Thursday.

The police department said White, who is survived by a wife and four children, was "a dedicated husband, father, and a fierce advocate for the officers he worked alongside."

Mike Chitwood, sheriff of nearby Volusia County, sent condolences after White's death, saying in a tweet that over 300 law enforcement officers have died because of Covid-19, making it "by far the biggest single cause of line-of-duty death."

"More than the senseless murders we see all too often," Chitwood wrote. "May Justin White rest in peace, may his family find the strength & support they need to carry on in his memory."

Florida's latest Covid surge, fueled by the contagious delta variant, is having a devastating impact on unvaccinated communities. A church in Jacksonville this month said six of its unvaccinated members died from the virus within 10 days of one another.

August 11, 2021 12:13 PM  
Anonymous The GOPer dream: of GOPers, by GOPers, for GOPers said...

Republicans are all about freedom — the freedom to refuse vaccination and masks, the freedom to irresponsibly spread the deadly Covid virus to the nation’s children, the freedom to dispense medical advice on Facebook, and, of course, to carry firearms everywhere (unless you are Black). Until it comes to the freedom for non-Republican-voting Americans to participate in the democratic process. Then conservative America is all paranoia and white knuckles if not nooses and insurrection.

August 11, 2021 2:31 PM  
Anonymous ‘I Am Legend’ screenwriter responds to conspiracy theory about vaccines turning people into zombies said...

There are a multitude of reasons why people are hesitant or refusing to get the coronavirus vaccine in the midst of a pandemic that’s killed over 600,000 people in the U.S. and millions worldwide, from distrust in science and medicine to wariness towards the government and also… zombies?

A New York Times report last weekend about a Bronx-based eyewear company struggling to persuade its employees to get jabbed referenced one worker whose hesitancy was based off of the belief that the COVID vaccine is the shot that turned people into zombies in the 2007 post-apocalyptic film I Am Legend.

As the Times pointed out, the zombification portrayed in the box office hit starring Will Smith was caused by a genetically reprogrammed virus, not the vaccine for it. But the bizarre claim has still flourished on the hotbed of vaccination misinformation that is social media.

On Monday, I Am Legend screenwriter Akiva Goldsman entered the chat.

“Oh. My. God. It’s a movie. I made that up. It’s. Not. Real,” Goldsman tweeted in response to journalist and comic book writer Marc Bernadin, who shared a screencap of the article with quote, “We. Are. All. Going. To. Die. Sooner. Than. We. Should.”

While Goldsman, 59, is no household name, he is also the Oscar-winning writer behind 2001’s A Beautiful Mind, which he worked on with frequent collaborator Ron Howard. Goldsman’s other credits include A Time to Kill (1996), I, Robot (2004), Cinderella Man (2005), The Da Vinci Code (2006) and the television series Fringe (2008-2013).

Loosely based on the 1954 sci-fi novel by Richard Matheson and directed by Francis Lawrence, I Am Legend starred Smith as a U.S. Army virologist and possibly the last man alive in New York City after a virus wipes out most of mankind and turns others into cannibalistic mutants.

Confusion about the film’s premise likely stems from the fact that its backstory alludes to the outbreak’s impetus, resulting from scientists’ attempts to cure cancer. But it was a genetically re-engineered version of the measles virus, not a vaccine, that went horribly awry.

Time magazine correspondent Vera Bergengruen went down the I Am Legend/COVID-19 “rabbit hole” on Monday, sharing a widely circulated meme created from the film and several social media comments linking the film with anti-vaxx sentiment.

“The striking thing about this anecdote is that it's not one person's crazy remark, but sounds like something that's been spreading around widely in some corners of the Internet,” Bergengruen wrote. “Which it turns out it has. This post has tens of thousands of shares, with mostly serious comments.”

Once again, for the folks in the back: Unlike the virus portrayed in I Am Legend, the COVID-19 vaccine was not genetically modified from a previous virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention explains as much on its website, a helpful antidote to any zombie-related vaccine hysteria. Also, yeah, it was a movie.

August 11, 2021 5:08 PM  

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