The Passing of Pat O'Neill
We want to take a minute here to express our appreciation for Patricia O'Neill, Montgomery County School Board member for twenty-three years, who passed away this week at the age of 71. Pat was a true friend of the county who always took her position on the school board seriously; she put time and effort into digging into the topics that faced the board, to see what was really behind them, what the options were, and what the consequences of the options would be. Other board members regarded her as the unofficial "historian" for the school board, as she could explain, off the top of her head, the background of every policy issue that came up.
Our group, Teach the Facts, formed when MCPS came under attack for its new sex-ed curriculum, and we worked with the school board and administration to make sure they understood that the Sturm und Drang of the rightwing rabblerousers was not representative of our community. Conservatives spent a lot of money to see that our county kids didn't learn about gay or transgender people, and we really relied on the courage of the school board to steer the district into a good, healthy direction that a majority of residents and parents wanted.
Pat was an unshakable ally through it all. She was not partisan but considered each issue rationally, and in the case of the sex-ed curriculum she was a solid advocate for comprehensive sex education and the inclusion of relevant and important facts. Her top priority was always the students, and she defended students who came from nontraditional families and also wanted to ensure that other students understood that some of their friends may have a single parent, or step-parents, or parents of the same sex. She also empathized with students who might be gay or transgender and supported the inclusion of material to help them understand themselves, and to help their friends understand them. These changes met with loud, high-profile resistance but Pat and the school board stood their ground and we are all better off for it.
Pat's statements during the board's public comment sessions were wry and insightful, and respectful, no matter what point of view was being expressed. For instance, when a parent once complained that the district did not have enough teachers to teach the new material, Pat thanked them and said she hoped that they would actively work to help increase the district's budget, so they could hire more teachers.
Pat O'Neill served five one-year terms as board president, and six terms as vice-president. Her death is a big loss to the county and she will be missed for a long time.
posted by JimK at 4:15 PM
26 Comments:
Rest In Peace Pat O'Neill and thanks for your leadership and contributions to MCPS.
Five people in Oregon landed in the hospital after attempting to ward off, or cure themselves of, COVID-19 with ivermectin, an antiparasitic drug that scientists have explicitly warned against as a COVID-cure. According to the Oregon Health & Science University News, the Oregon Poison Center has dealt with 25 Oregonians who opted to use the unproven drug to try to treat or prevent COVID-19 between Aug. 1 and Sept. 14. Five of them had such adverse reactions to ivermectin, they were admitted to the intensive care unit.
Dr. Robert Hendrickson, medical director of the Oregon Poison Center at Oregon Health & Science University, warned of taking the “unproven and potentially dangerous” drug. He urged health care providers to prescribe “treatments that are already carefully tested and approved.”
Doctors who prescribe this for COVID should be sanctioned. At the very least they should be publicly named so that sane people can avoid going to them.
These people could get a free, effective, easily accessible vaccine that has minimal side effects but they would rather do this. It’s inexplicable. And the politicians are egging them on.
"Doctors who prescribe this for COVID should be sanctioned. At the very least they should be publicly named so that sane people can avoid going to them."
actually, this drug has been prescrid=bed to people for years, for other ailments
it may not work for COVID but the danger is being hyped by jackasses like you
the people hospitalized likely took more than the recommended dose
if would be preferable if a doctor were involved
"These people could get a free, effective, easily accessible vaccine that has minimal side effects but they would rather do this. It’s inexplicable."
we live in a day in age when the information is readily available
if they choose not to get vaccinated, that's their choice
remember, the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v Wade that there is a constitutional right to control over your own body
you favor overturning that?
All of a sudden GOPers support the notion that people have a constitutional right to control their own bodies.
Glad to see you have come to that realization.
The day we all dreaded has finally arrived: Idaho is in crisis standards of care.
What does that mean to you? Be careful what you do out there.
The hospitals are overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients right now.
The numbers show that nearly every patient in Idaho hospitals and intensive care units with the virus is unvaccinated.
This really is where the argument over health freedom breaks down. The decision to not get vaccinated and not wear a mask allows the novel coronavirus, and now its variants, to spread in the community. Because COVID-19 is so transmissible, so damaging and so deadly, it’s overwhelming our health care system — and that affects everyone.
Everyone.
Already, non-emergency surgeries are being delayed. Doctors who would otherwise perform routine checkups are being called in to help out in the hospitals, meaning you might need to forget about that annual physical or other appointment.
For COVID-19 cases reported in Idaho from May 15 through Sept. 11, 89.9% (39,256 of 43,672 total cases) were among individuals who were not fully vaccinated, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare. Unvaccinated individuals accounted for 91.1% of COVID-19 hospitalizations (1,683 of 1,847) during that same time period and 88% of deaths (316 of 359).
St. Luke’s reported that 92-94% of its COVID-19 patients in the past week have been unvaccinated. And 95-98% of its COVID-19 patients taking up ICU beds were unvaccinated.
Here’s an even scarier statement, from the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare’s strategies during crisis standards of care:
“Universal DNR Order: Adult patients hospitalized during a public health emergency, when crisis standards of care have been declared, should receive aggressive interventions; however, they should receive NO attempts at resuscitation (compressions, shocks or intubation if not yet intubated) in the event of cardiac arrest. The likelihood of survival after a cardiac arrest is extremely low for adult patients. As well, resuscitation poses significant risk to healthcare workers due to aerosolization of body fluids and uses large quantities of scarce resources such as staff time, personal protective equipment, and lifesaving medications, with minimal opportunity for benefit.”
In other words, whether we’ve signed a “do not resuscitate” directive or not, everyone single one of us is now under a DNR directive in Idaho because we’ve reached crisis standards of care due to a deadly and overwhelming surge of unvaccinated COVID-19 patients in our hospitals.
And it’s all entirely preventable.
But please, go ahead, Dare to be Stupid.
https://healthandwelfare.idaho.gov/news/idaho-expands-crisis-standards-care-statewide-due-surge-covid-19-patients-requiring-0
"The day we all dreaded has finally arrived: Idaho is in crisis standards of care.
What does that mean to you? Be careful what you do out there.
The hospitals are overwhelmed with unvaccinated COVID-19 patients right now.
The numbers show that nearly every patient in Idaho hospitals and intensive care units with the virus is unvaccinated.
This really is where the argument over health freedom breaks down. The decision to not get vaccinated and not wear a mask allows the novel coronavirus, and now its variants, to spread in the community."
and, yet, even though it's spreading in the community, only the unvaccinated are getting ill enough to require hospitalization
they made their choice
you really have no right to intervene
"Because COVID-19 is so transmissible, so damaging and so deadly, it’s overwhelming our health care system — and that affects everyone.
Everyone."
because the hospitals are filled?
as you say, their sickness is preventable
set aside a certain percentage of beds for COVID patients
when full, sent them out of state
problem solved
"All of a sudden GOPers support the notion that people have a constitutional right to control their own bodies.
Glad to see you have come to that realization."
well, I'm not a GOPer but I've always believed "that people have a constitutional right to control their own bodies"
however, when two bodies are involved, as in pregnancy, the weaker one is entitled to equal protection under the law
but, how hypocritical of Dems
the only time they support this right is when it is interpreted to allow someone to kill their own child
other than that, they believe the government can invade your body for the "public good"
the Constitution never said constitutional rights are suspended when a bad respiratory ailment is circulating
and the Founders were completely familiar with infectious diseases
this country wasn't founded by Marx and Lenin
https://www.msn.com/en-us/travel/article/miami-beach-pride-parade-finished-off-sunday-with-e2-80-98fabulous-display-of-creativity-and-pride/ar-AAOBlTS?ocid=uxbndlbing
some revolting antics at the Gay Pride parade in Miami on Sunday
notice that there's not a mask in sight
not one person
homosexuals are super-spreaders
All those vaccinated people walking outside and waving rainbow flags...
It must be revolting to you that they can do it safely while all those unvaccinated MAGATs start filling up hospitals after they do the same thing.
"only the unvaccinated are getting ill enough to require hospitalization"
There you go, lying again as usual.
Back in August, the Hill reported:
"Utah topped the list, with 0.36 percent or 5,265 breakthrough cases in its 1,462,313 fully vaccinated residents from Jan. 16 until this week. In that period, the state reported approximately 115,000 coronavirus cases."
"Tennessee’s Department of Health references the CDC’s policy in its critical indicator reports, where breakthrough cases with severe outcomes are regularly included. As of July 29, the state had reported 31 breakthrough deaths and 218 breakthrough hospitalizations."
"Illinois reported 714 breakthrough hospitalizations and 180 deaths, representing 2.58 percent of COVID-19 deaths since data collection began in January."
"Nationally, an exceedingly low number of fully vaccinated people have contracted the virus. Out of the 101 million people vaccinated from January through April, the CDC reported 10,262 breakthrough infections in 46 U.S. states and territories. "
In 1777, the general required his troops to get inoculated for smallpox.
George Washington mandated vaccines against smallpox believing one’s freedom does not mean others should suffer as a consequence.
According to the Library of Congress, presented in an editorial by the Miami Herald, in 1777, the U.S.’s future first president led the first mass military mandatory inoculation.
The inoculation of the Continental Army soldiers was considerably more questionable – back then, soldiers had to volunteer to expose themselves to smallpox, either by scratching it into their arms or inhaling it through their noses, without a guarantee that would be immunity – and some of them died following orders.
“We should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy,” Washington said in regards to the disease.
In modern politics, the concern of public health and safety is sometimes pitted against one’s freedom and the government’s obligation to protect and serve.
While the 18-century mandatory vaccination was risky, it paid off as disease incidence dropped. Thanks to vaccinations, the last natural outbreak of smallpox in the U.S. happened in 1949, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Smallpox was eradicated in the 1980s thanks to the world’s efforts with vaccines, drugs, and diagnostic tests.
What changed the American people’s perspective on mandated vaccinations: public figures combating misinformation, according to the Herald.
Whether it is Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) or celebrities like Jenny McCarthy during the 90s and 2000s or recently Nicki Minaj, vaccination hesitancy disguised as free will clouds some people’s better judgment.
Despite years of evidence that vaccines are effective against measles, mumps, and rubella, as well as controlling or eradicating other diseases, conspiracies about how modern medicine is giving people autism or swollen testicles are all one needs to be turned away from getting vaccinated.
The only thing wrong with the U.S. economy is the failure of the Republican Party to play Santa Claus.
—Jude Wanniski, March 6, 1976
The stock market is falling, a reaction to GOP threats to shut down the government: it’s all part of their plan.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen last week warned us that the GOP is about to use Jude Wanniski’s “Two Santa Clauses” fraud again to damage Biden’s economy and our standing in the world. And, sure enough, Mitch McConnell verified it when he said last week there would be “zero” Republican votes to raise the debt ceiling.
Yellen responded yesterday by telling The Wall Street Journal that if the Republicans force a shutdown of the US government like they did to Obama in 2011, “We would emerge from this crisis a permanently weaker nation.” But the GOP is adamant: they have their strategy and they’re sticking to it.
Here’s how it works, laid it out in simple summary:
First, the Two Santas strategy dictates, when Republicans control the White House they must spend money like a drunken Santa and cut taxes to run up the US debt as far and as fast as possible.
This produces three results: it stimulates the economy thus making people think that the GOP can produce a good economy; it raises the debt dramatically; and it makes people think that Republicans are the “tax-cut Santa Clauses.”
Second, when a Democrat is in the White House, Republicans must scream about the national debt as loudly and frantically as possible, freaking out about how “our children will have to pay for it!” and “we have to cut spending to solve the crisis!” Shut down the government, crash the stock market, and damage US credibility around the world if necessary to stop Democrats from spending money.
This will force the Democrats in power to cut their own social safety net programs and even Social Security, thus shooting their welfare-of-the-American-people Santa Claus right in the face.
And, sure enough, here we are now with a Democrat in the White House. Following their Two Santas strategy, Republicans are again squealing about the national debt and refusing to raise the debt ceiling, imperiling Biden’s economic recovery as well as his Build Back Better plans.
And, once again, the media is covering it as a “Biden Crisis!” rather than what it really is: a cynical political and media strategy devised by Republicans in the 70s, fine-tuned in the 80s and 90s, and rolled out every time a Democrat is in the White House.
There was an actual, documented GOP plan to overturn the 2020 election. Like any point-shaving scandal, the GOP vote suppression plans resemble the ability to throw out legal votes and ballots and reduce the numerical proportions to favor them.
The 1/6 Select Committee might ask some questions of John Eastman about his memo. VP Pence’s unwillingness to follow the blueprint seems now even more important.
John Eastman's memo:
1. VP Pence, presiding over the joint session (or Senate Pro Tempore Grassley, if Pence recuses himself), begins to open and count the ballots, starting with Alabama (without conceding that the procedure, specified by the Electoral Count Act, of going through the States alphabetically is required).
2. When he gets to Arizona, he announces that he has multiple slates of electors, and so is going to defer decision on that until finishing the other States. This would be the first break with the procedure set out in the Act.
3. At the end, he announces that because of the ongoing disputes in the 7 States, there are no electors that can be deemed validly appointed in those States. That means the total number of “electors appointed” – the language of the 12th Amendment -- is 454. This reading of the 12th Amendment has also been advanced by Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe (here). A “majority of the electors appointed” would therefore be 228. There are at this point 232 votes for Trump, 222 votes for Biden. Pence then gavels President Trump as re-elected.
4. Howls, of course, from the Democrats, who now claim, contrary to Tribe’s prior position, that 270 is required. So Pence says, fine. Pursuant to the 12th Amendment, no candidate has achieved the necessary majority. That sends the matter to the House, where the “the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote . . . .” Republicans currently control 26 of the state delegations, the bare majority needed to win that vote. President Trump is re-elected there as well.
5. One last piece. Assuming the Electoral Count Act process is followed and, upon getting the objections to the Arizona slates, the two houses break into their separate chambers, we should not allow the Electoral Count Act constraint on debate to control. That would mean that a prior legislature was determining the rules of the present one — a constitutional no-no (as Tribe has forcefully argued). So someone – Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, etc. – should demand normal rules (which includes the filibuster). That creates a stalemate that would give the state legislatures more time to weigh in to formally support the alternate slate of electors, if they had not already done so.
6. The main thing here is that Pence should do this without asking for permission – either from a vote of the joint session or from the Court. Let the other side challenge his actions in court, where Tribe (who in 2001 conceded the President of the Senate might be in charge of counting the votes) and others who would press a lawsuit would have their past position -- that these are non-justiciable political questions – thrown back at them, to get the lawsuit dismissed. The fact is that the Constitution assigns this power to the Vice President as the ultimate arbiter. We should take all of our actions with that in mind.
California now has nation's lowest virus transmission rate
Poll: By double digits, Americans prefer Democratic leadership on Delta, say pandemic would be worse with Trump in charge
U.S. default this fall would cost 6 million jobs, wipe out $15 trillion in wealth, study says
Debt ceiling fight pits corporate America against Republicans
House passes bill to prevent shutdown and suspend debt limit
The federal government faces a shutdown if funding stops on Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year, midnight next Thursday. Additionally, in October the U.S. risks defaulting on its accumulated debt load if its borrowing limits are not waived or adjusted.
Michael Flynn's deep state of confusion:
In a show dedicated to covid and election fraud conspiracies, Michael Flynn yesterday brings up an article he read that the Deep State medical establishment is planning to secretly put the covid vaccine in salad dressing.
FLYNN: “Somebody sent me a thing this morning where they’re talking about putting the vaccine in salad dressing. … And I’m thinking to myself, this is the Bizarro World, right? This is definitely the Bizarro World. … These people are seriously thinking about how to impose their will on us in our society, and it has to stop.”
Why is this trending with Ranch Dressing. Shouldn’t it be Russian?
As Joe Biden’s presidency implodes, polling shows former President Donald Trump would trounce Biden in a 2024 rematch.
The fabled Rasmussen Reports, one of the country’s most accurate pollsters, shows that should Trump choose to run again in 2024, he would obliterate Joe Biden by a margin of 51 to 41 percent.
He’s also guaranteed to win the Republican nomination. Other than a sitting president, who has ever been in a position like that? Trump would make history. He would be the first defeated president to win absolution through a rematch, to win back the Oval Office.
Never has a defeated President held on to his base of support the way Trump has.
Dive across the country and you still see Trump flags and banners everywhere.
This is unprecedented. This level of loyalty, of support for Trump, is simply mind-blowing.
Of course, Trump’s most significant advantage in a 2024 match-up is Biden’s god-awful pile of spectacular failures— the coronavirus, the border, Afghanistan, the economy, his domestic agenda, energy prices… And all of those failures are not crises that befell the Biden administration. These are not hurricanes or terrorist attacks. Nope, each of these crises directly results from Biden’s enfeebled mind, his terrible judgment, his left-wing extremism, and his sociopathic lack of empathy.
As far as Kamala Harris, Trump could beat her without even campaigning. Rasmussen has Trump beating her by a healthy margin of 52 to 39 percent. She’s a total lightweight, a bizarre cackler, a walking neurotic with a room temperature IQ who didn’t win a single vote in the 2020 Democrat primary because she was forced to drop off before the voting began.
She’s just that awful.
"We want to take a minute here to express our appreciation for Patricia O'Neill, Montgomery County School Board member for twenty-three years,"
clearly, the school board needs term limits tp prevent a recurrence
even in the most leftist county in America, no one should be sitting on the school board so long that they come to be regarded as its "historian"
MCPS board shouldn't be a lifetime position like the Queen of England, the Pope, the Supreme Court, or the General Secretary of the Communist Party in Cuba!
renowned artist Hunter Biden has some new emails out:
https://nypost.com/2021/09/23/hunter-biden-emails-boast-ties-to-white-house-and-china/
Politicians almost always act in their own electoral interest. This sounds bad except that much of the time that means that they are acting in the self-interest of the people who voted for them, representing the views of the majority of their constituents. It is rare that a politician acts against his own self-interest—but then again, Donald Trump is a rare breed of politician. No politician has made it a habit of acting against his own electoral interest like Donald Trump.
Trump and many of his Republican colleagues have allowed a virulent anti-vaccine/anti-masking/anti-social distancing campaign to spread among their voters, reinforced by Fox News. The campaign gained strength just in time for the emergence of a new and more contagious COVID variant: the Delta variant. Polling has shown that the anti-vaccine message is especially popular among Republicans. Kaiser Family Foundation data indicate that Republicans are the group most likely to say they will “definitely not” get a vaccine.
A total of 17 of the 18 states that voted for Trump in the 2020 election have the lowest vaccination rates. The exception was Georgia which went for Biden by a very small margin.
But in recent weeks some Republican leaders have been changing their tune. Right-wing stalwarts like Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), the House Republican whip, just got vaccinated publicly. This move is in contrast to former President Trump and First Lady Melania who got vaccinated before leaving the White House without making a public appearance out of it and without urging their supporters to do the same. The very conservative governor of Alabama held a press conference to admonish her constituents to get vaccinated. Appearing every bit the irritated grandmother talking to teenagers she said:
“It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down. I’ve done all I know how to do. I can encourage you to do something but I can’t make you take care of yourself.”
And Fox News has taken some small steps towards sanity with several high-profile anchors disputing disinformation from the web and urging viewers to get vaccines.
Slowly but surely, in recent weeks, the number of vaccinations has been increasing. So why the change of heart among conservative leaders? Reality is probably the biggest reason. Grandmothers dying, hospitals overrun, and young people getting sick have a way of combatting the nonsense on the web. Eventually conservative leaders will not want to bear responsibility for the pain of so many. Now that the COVID casualties are piling up in deep red states rather than liberal cities on the coasts they are finding their pandemic humanity. And so politics may well be driving the Republican about-face as elected officials recognize that people are dying and many of those are potential Republican voters in 2022 and beyond...
It’s not too far out to assume that in some places the Republican quiescence in the face of anti-vax nonsense may be killing their own voters. As we know from this long pandemic, it hits the elderly the hardest. People 65 and older are most likely to die. And as we know from many surveys, Trump’s support is highest in the oldest age cohort, those over 65 years old. In Arizona, Michigan and Pennsylvania there will be tough contests at the statewide and congressional levels and 2024 is likely to be as close as was 2020. Given these numbers, killing off your most reliable voters is perhaps not the best strategy.
Draft report of GOP-backed ballot review in Arizona confirms Biden’s win
A rally planned for Saturday at the Arizona Capitol that aims to support “political prisoners" of the January 6 insurrection will feature speakers who are white nationalists, have endorsed Nazi ideology and are facing charges for storming the U.S. Capitol alongside GOP legislators.
he event is organized by a group that boasts two officials from the Arizona Senate's election “audit" on its leadership team.
One of the speakers, “American Greyson" Arnold, has used his social media pages to post memes lauding Nazis as the “pure race" and lament the American victory in World War II. He also called Adolf Hitler a “complicated historical figure."
Arnold is one of several announced speakers at a rally organized by a group called Look Ahead America, which is run by Matt Braynard, the former director of data and strategy for Donald Trump's 2020 campaign. Arizona's rally is one of several being held across the country, and comes a week after a rally Braynard planned in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 18 largely fizzled.
The most recent slate of speakers also includes Republican state legislators Mark Finchem and Wendy Rogers — the former was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 and the latter cheered on the violent failed coup on social media — U.S. Senate candidate Jim Lamon, and congressional candidates Jeff Zink and Eli Crane.
The lineup also includes Micajah Jackson, who is facing federal charges for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6. The FBI alleges that Jackson participated in a march alongside members of the Proud Boys chapter from Arizona and that he entered knowingly without permission.
GOP officials will share the stage with avowed white nationalists
Jackson's online persona regularly shares conspiracy theories, and both he and Arnold are considered “Groypers," a subset of the white nationalist community who often troll conservatives who they feel are not extreme enough. Though loosely organized and members of many different groups, groypers are almost all followers of white nationalist Nick Fuentes.
One of the main goals of groypers is to push conservatives in a white nationalist direction and one of their strategies is by presenting their views in a mainstream appearance or within mainstream organizations.
Arnold hosted an event at Lake Havasu earlier this year inspired by Fuentes dubbed “White Boy Summer." The idea was co-opted from Chet Hanks, son of actor Tom Hanks, who had published a series of social media posts critiquing white men's attire and behavior and later dubbed the summer of 2021 “White Boy Summer."
White nationalist and white supremacist groups co-opted the slogan as a call for action. Arnold's “White Boy Summer" event in Havasu featured Jackson as a speaker.
And two officials from the Arizona Senate's self-styled “audit" of the 2020 election in Maricopa County hold leadership posts in Look Ahead America, the group organizing Saturday's rally.
Senate “audit" liaison and former Secretary of State Ken Bennett is the “state chairman" for Look Ahead America, while Julie Fisher, his deputy liaison, is the group's “state operations coordinator." Fisher also worked for the Trump campaign in Arizona in 2020.
Bennett told the Arizona Mirror that he is on a “leave of absence" from the organization to focus on the election review, and was not involved in planning the event or choosing the speakers. He did not respond to additional questions about the speakers or their support of extremist and racist ideology.
Direct ties to the failed coup
Jackson isn't the only speaker tied to the violent insurrection that aimed to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden's election victory.
Finchem attended Donald Trump's rally earlier that day and marched to the Capitol. Although he insisted that he never got within 500 yards of the Capitol building, footage emerged months later showing he was directly in front of the east steps at the Capitol after pro-Trump rioters had already broken through a series of barricades and police lines, and then smashed their way into the Capitol building.
And Zink, who is running for Congress against Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, has connections to the events: His son was arrested for trespassing, assault and damaging property. Zink has said that his son is falsely accused, but the FBI contends that photos from his son's own Facebook page and security camera footage put his son at the scene and show him damaging property.
Lamon, who is vying for the GOP nomination to challenge Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, has given millions of dollars to Looking Ahead America, according to reports by independent journalist Hunter Walker and Axios.
Iowa GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley Seeking Reelection For 8th Term
The 88-year-old, who has been in the Senate for 40 years.
Once proudly bipartisan, Grassley adapted deftly to the new hyperpartisanship of the Trump era. While some of his fellow longtimers in Washington are calling it quits, fed up with the rightward lurch of the GOP or the inertia in Congress, Grassley has set out to show he’s thriving.
Grassley has adapted smoothly to changes in the GOP. He’s consistently supported Trump’s agenda and often his political tactics. At times, he’s even taken a lead role in satisfying the party’s vocal right wing.
But the senator hasn’t always been a Trump acolyte. He voted to count Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes the day of the deadly Capitol riot in January. He also objected loudly to waivers the Trump administration gave petroleum companies from the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, a goal that helps Iowa farmers.
reitbart News writer John Nolte argued Monday that Howard Stern and the left are using reverse psychology to trick Republicans into dying of Covid.
Stern, Nolte argues, has mocked unvaccinated radio hosts who died of Covid because he and the rest of the liberal media are “deliberately looking to manipulate Trump supporters into not getting vaccinated” — so that they die.
The absurd and convoluted assertion involves a hierarchy of “owns” that ultimately culminate in large “swathes”(sic) of Trump voters dying of the “China flu.” He eventually arrives at an encouragement for taking the vaccine but seems to suggest that the primary motivation to get inoculated to, of course, own the libs.
The implicit point — buried in the usual MAGA writer bluster about libs and owns and “CNNLOL” — is that the vaccine saves lives and that people should get vaccinated to stay alive. As even Donald Trump himself has seen, even implying a message of “get vaccinated” can, on the right, be a recipe for being booed at least, if not driven right off a stage or out of a Texas restaurant.
So instead Nolte argues that, in fact, they aren’t trying to boss us around to get us to take the vaccine, but to NOT to!
If I wanted to use reverse psychology to convince people not to get a life-saving vaccination, I would do exactly what Stern and the left are doing… I would bully and taunt and mock and ridicule you for not getting vaccinated, knowing the human response would be, Hey, fuck you, I’m never getting vaccinated!
“No one ever wants to feel like they are being bullied or ridiculed or mocked or pushed into doing anything,” he writes.
That truism sounds compelling, absent any additional context (which is a truism of truisms!), but the oversimplification of a complex psychological phenomenon isn’t exactly evidence of conspiracy.
Nolte goes on to make the absurd case that unvaccinated Americans are in danger of dying because of the media’s manipulation. Nolte writes:
No one wants to cave to a piece of shit like that, or a scumbag like Fauci, or any of the scumbags at CNNLOL, so we don’t. And what’s the result? They’re all vaccinated, and we’re not! And when you look at the numbers, the only numbers that matter, which is who’s dying, it’s overwhelmingly the unvaccinated who are dying, and they have just manipulated millions of their political enemies into the unvaccinated camp.
This is a pretty strong argument for vaccines, one that might normally get someone in Nolte’s position drummed out of favor. But his illogical twist of manipulation just saves his neck from MAGA anger. In other words, he is suggesting that Trump supporters can still own the libs, but now they can own them with science!
[First, they would have to pretend to believe in science.]
Nolte repeats several times the point that Stern and the media and Democrats have bullied, mocked, or taunted people on the right, and that people on the right are dying while unvaccinated, drawing a direct cause and effect between the two.
He even puts mandates on a new footing, arguing “the push for mandates is another ploy to get us to dig in and not do what’s best for ourselves because no one wants to feel like they’re caving to a mandate.”
It’s a novel approach but one that obviously invites enormous bullying, mockery, and taunting on social media, ironically.
Nolte’s article ends on a dissonant note. “I could be wrong,” he writes. “Maybe the left isn’t that evil and sly.”
Republican Review of Arizona Vote Fails to Show Stolen Election
The much criticized review showed much the same results as in November, with 99 more Biden votes and 261 fewer Trump ones.
"Why isn’t Trump turning his rallies into mass vaccination sites?"
Trump isn't President
Biden is
why isn't Slidin' Biden having some vaccination rallies?
"Once proudly bipartisan, Grassley adapted deftly to the new hyperpartisanship of the Trump era. He’s consistently supported Trump’s agenda and often his political tactics. At times, he’s even taken a lead role in satisfying the party’s vocal right wing."
I hate to break it to you but Trump was a moderate
he had an obnoxious personality but his views were mainstream
"But the senator hasn’t always been a Trump acolyte. He voted to count Arizona’s and Pennsylvania’s Electoral College votes the day of the deadly Capitol riot in January. He also objected loudly to waivers the Trump administration gave petroleum companies from the federal Renewable Fuel Standard, a goal that helps Iowa farmers."
LOL
you claim Grassley was moderate but changed in the Trump era
but you give examples of his moderation in the final weeks of the Trump era
it's OK. you can't help it
you have a low IQ
"I hate to break it to you but Trump was a moderate
he had an obnoxious personality but his views were mainstream"
Hate to break it to you, but that's what all the white nationalists think.
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