Anne Laurie posted this in her COVID roundup, but I wanted to call it out:
This Politico deep dive on Dunning-Krueger COVIDiocy at the Lake of the Ozarks makes me think these red state fucks will never get vaccinated. Example:
Known for its Cajun cuisine, Shorty Pants was brimming with customers on a recent weeknight. A live band took requests to the delight of dancing guests who twirled to Journey or played air guitar to AC/DC. A group of 12 sitting nearby celebrated birthdays by downing a round of shots.
Inside, McNay sat along with a half a dozen other customers who likewise lamented, what they viewed as, a breathless push for vaccines. Two bartenders floated in and out of the conversation, dropping comments like “what’s Covid?” to laughter. Just recently, a beloved cook at the restaurant had died from the virus, they said. But that hadn’t changed the thinking around vaccinations. The cook, they reasoned, likely had other underlying complications.
“We don’t know what else was wrong with him,” said Murry Ferris, who frequents Shorty Pants with his wife Jane. By contrast, Murry said, he and his wife exercise vigorously and regularly. Even so, Jane Ferris said the vaccine hadn’t been studied long enough and she didn’t want to be a “guinea pig.”
Even if all eligible persons were vaccinated today in these hotspots, they wouldn’t reach full immunity in time for school. What a choice for a parent: risk your child’s life by sending them to school, or risk your income and their future by keeping them home.
I really don’t see the political downside of much tougher action at the federal level, no matter how much whining it causes in red states. Also, I’m not ready to ding the FDA for not approving the vaccine for kids, or to criticize the wording of our outreach, or any other of the many critiques I see in the media. We wouldn’t be seeing stories about kids on vents if all the vaccine available had been used. The bottom line is that refusers won’t listen, and the only way to empty out hospitals and to protect children is to use some level of coercion to get shots in arms.
ET
Looks like the Administration is going to announce federal contractors will be required to get a vaccine not as clear how applicable or not applicable it is to federal employees.
Betty Cracker
Agreed. Millions of our fellow citizens are just too goddamn stupid to get vaxxed in sufficient numbers absent coercion. Now we know this, so we have to proceed accordingly.
Last week, there was a spate of media attention about how fed up the vaxxed are with the unvaxxed. Some folks (including me) made the connection between that and the Republicans’ sudden about-face on vaccination. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out now that the death cult has pivoted again.
gene108
I am totally in favor of coercion. I doubt it comes from the federal government at this point.
I think it will start with employer vaccine mandates.
Then state & local laws requiring vaccines in more cases, like teachers, healthcare workers, first responders, etc.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I think the California recall election will tell us if this is true.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Madame Speaker is so out of fucks to give
I wonder how much of this is her signaling she’s gonna retire after this Congress
Baud
@gene108:
Agree. This will have to be as much bottom up as it is top down.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
People who are refusing for what are basically political identity reasons will not get vaccinated… until they know multiple people who have been hospitalized or died. They can rationalize one guy who had some underlying conditions. They will start to get nervous when they know a bunch of people who are very, very sick. You can try to coerce them to do the right thing. They will either fight it or resent it. If you protect them from the consequences of their behavior, they won’t learn. They will just live to fight you harder.
Right wing media is a disease. The fever has to break to make any future progress. I hate that they have done so much damage. I hate that more people, including people who have tried to do all the right things, are going to be sickened and some die. At this point with our current politics, I don’t see any other way.
Villago Delenda Est
These idiots all plan on voting for TFG in 2024, too.
ET
@gene108: I agree, private companies are going to start pushing this as soon as there is a bit more legal clarity. The only control the federal government has in terms of vaccine mandates are federal employees and maybe on airplanes.
Baud
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
Agree. The ideological philosophy of the right is driven by a single premise: that they can outlast us. That’s what we have to change, and it will take a long time.
Villago Delenda Est
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:
I’d add that the MSM is infested with a disease called Broderism: that “both sides” is a valid method of reporting news. It’s an inherently pro-GQp way to seem “objective”, but it is utterly insidious at undermining any notion of objectivity, because sometimes a fact is a fact, jack, and there’s no way around that unless your Chris Clitzilla or Chuckles the Toddler.
Baud
The right is doing what the right does. I’m more disappointed at how many young adults aren’t getting vaxxed. I had higher expectations of them.
different-church-lady
Comedy is when someone else dies. Tragedy is when you suggest I do a minor thing that will keep someone else from dying.
Kay
We have to keep schools open. Offer an online option if there’s demand but they cannot miss more school. The bottom quarter will never catch up.
Take extraordinary measures but do not close schools again.
germy
topclimber
@ET: Waiting for Collins or Sinema to tell us this provision will finally kill the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
smith
@Baud: For almost all of the pandemic so far, infection rates have been higher in 18-39-year olds than in older groups. We are looking at the possibility of an entire generation disabled to a certain extent by long covid. If the current estimate of 25% lasting health problems after covid is accurate, that’s a lot of people unable to work, and needing ongoing extra medical care that younger people wouldn’t ordinarily need.
Emma from Miami
Let me say something heartless and utterly horrible: let them die. I do not mean withhold treatment or medical care, especially for children whose parents make the choice. But structure sane society around them. Put clear, logical mask mandates in place and enforce them. Whatever has been proven to work, use it. They are on their own on this.
rp
I don’t play fantasy football, but those who do can probably get a big advantage when drafting by tracking which teams and players are vaccinated. There are apparently a lot of holdouts, and those teams are going to have problems when players get sick or have to be quarantined. Idiots
Mart
Lake of the Ozarks swells on summer weekends with nasty ass rich white people. We know three unvaccinated folks with property and boats there. Two of them are not getting vaxxed as they already had it. I refuse to see them. The third used to repeatedly ask me to come have a beer at a St. Louis suburb watering hall. Noted it was closed for awhile. Googled and found the owner had died… from COVID. They think we are the Covidiots for not going out and enjoying life.
burnspbesq
Think it’s bad in the Confederacy now? Just wait until football (high school and college) starts up. Super-spreader events all weekend, every weekend, all over everywhere.
Mike in NC
The local rag decided that today’s front page story was about a bunch of snowflakes who turned out last month to complain to a local school board about their kids being indoctrinated in “Critical Race Theory” (which was basically something that FOX News dreamed up so that Tucker Carlson could drone on about it for hours on end). The photo of these parents complaining about “Marxism” looked exactly like a bunch of goobers who were rejected from admission to a Trump hate rally.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: LOL, go Nancy! She’s 80 years old, and I think she made a pledge not to run for speaker again, so she probably will retire. Damn, we’re going to miss her. She is irreplaceable!
lowtechcyclist
@ET:
Per your link, it seems pretty clear to me:
Emphasis mine.
Geo
@Villago Delenda Est: If they’re still alive…
burnspbesq
@rp:
WFT’s head coach, who is immuno-compromised from cancer treatment, was quoted in the last couple of days as being extremely disappointed in his squad, which is barely over 50 percent vaxxed.
burnspbesq
@lowtechcyclist:
Paxton will sue. Bet the ranch on it.
Charluckles
Lake of the Ozarks is Trump country to a point of hilarity. Ostentatious displays of wealth and decadence accompanied by never ending grievance and claims towards being the only true salt-of-the-earth hard working American patriots.
Steeplejack
Good explainer on Simone Biles:
Delk
A whole generation of kids could die and they would still be just crisis actors.
dr. bloor
@burnspbesq: EDSTD*
*Everything Dan Snyder Touches Dies
Another Scott
Kinda relatedly, STATNews (from June 16):
Accurate real-time data that doesn’t depend on individual action (if I’m not feeling good, do I get tested or do I stay home or do I power through it? – each answer generates different community health data) [edit] is essential. That’s one reason why hospitalization data is so important (compared to cases and deaths which are data that isn’t as clean).
We’re learning a lot, but we still need a systemic approach to fighting this pandemic (and preparing for the next). Yes, we let RWNJ politics drive too much opposition to sensible public health measures, but we can and should be doing much more than trying to get people to get vaccinated and wear masks (as vital as that is). That’s only part of the fight.
We still don’t have an effective contact tracing and isolation system. If/when we get cases low enough to do it, will we actually do it? What’s the plan? What systems will be in place to pay people who can’t work, who have bills that need to be paid when they can’t work, etc., etc.? How can we truly crush the pandemic without such systems?
Cheers,
Scott.
scav
@Betty Cracker: Not too stupid. Too mean — or at the limits of charity, too self-obsessed and self-image obsessed to care positively for others.
But they are doing this with their brains. And with their hearts. This. Is. Them.
brendancalling
@Emma from Miami: this is how I largely feel with carve outs not only for the kids, but for BIPOC communities that have a history of victimization at the hands of the medical community. Although, FWIW, it seems that population IS getting vaccinated at a steady rate, and certainly higher than the deniers.
But the rascal-riding, gun-toting, treasonous Trumpists and their ilk? Those beds should go to people who didn’t deliberately put themselves at risk.
It’s cruel and awful to say, but their sociopathy is hurting all of us.
Anonymous At Work
All federal employees and contractors, with limited and documented exceptions. DoD with much more limited exceptions (i.e. “I have severe immunocompromising ilnesses” is not something you want in a DoD employee anyway). Start using leverage with Dept of Education funding to get at teachers. Start conditioning access to federal buildings and resources.
The long and short is that lack of vaccination is a choice that negatively impacts both that person and those around them, and treating them as a threat to the general public’s well-being is how to mandate-without-legislation.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
The thing is, she shouldn’t be irreplaceable. They got here by having left the same people as the House leadership for decades. They’ve started to rectify that by adding more people to the leadership team, but it’s going to take awhile for that to matter. Meanwhile, it isn’t really clear who could do Pelosi’s job half as well as she is doing it. I remember that before AOC won her primary a few years ago, the no-name she beat out was considered one of the top contenders for the Speakership* when Pelosi retired.
marklar
I’m teaching Intro to Psych this summer, and tonight we’re covering some of Festinger’s work on Cognitive Dissonance. I think I’ll frame the class around the passage from Politico.
Thanks!
Ten Bears
Operation Just Let Them
Speak“Be Free” is working out perfectly.Ken
@rp: Fantasy football may need to set up scoring rules for when real teams can’t play because of COVID. I suppose it could be covered by the existing injury rules, which are basically “your guy couldn’t play? No score.”
Baud
@brendancalling:
Good to hear. Although I’m inclined to give them a little more leeway, the emphasis is on little.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lowtechcyclist: Joe Crowley was chair of the House Dem Caucus, so not a “no name” to the people who, you know, elect the Speaker of the House. The work of legislative leaders often goes on behind the scenes and not (ahem) always on camera.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
No amount of planning can make up for the loss of a GOAT.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
I think that’s going to far. The ideological philosophy of the right is now “Fuck you.” Any individual may paint their personal hobby horses on top of it. One of the major underscores of their panic and of voter suppression is that they are realizing they cannot outlast us and they’re flailing for ways to beat back the inevitable.
Quiltingfool
I live near Lake of the Ozarks. I’ve eaten at Shorty Pants (pre-Covid). Not a bit surprised about the attitude towards Covid or the vaccine. The people frequenting Shorty Pants and other lakeside bar/restaurants are NOT the poor folk; these are people who can afford a second home, a very expensive boat, and all the expenses those things required. Now, the wait staff? I’m hoping they are vaccinated and just play acting to get better tips. If not, they may find out the meaning of “fuck around and find out.”
See, people who work at these places have a five month window to make the bulk of their yearly income. Wait staff can pull down $600 or more a week (4 days being a week). About October, most will be working elsewhere, or, if lucky, will be moved to another restaurant that stays open year-round. Most of the popular Lake bars are owned by one person, so shuffling workers around isn’t difficult. So, these workers aren’t going to make a fuss about their own health. And, most of them have no health insurance. I look for a rash of go fund me accounts in the next month.
Lake of the Ozark area is massively Republican. This is a place where very well off folks who love the idea of no taxes (for them) and the locals who are anti choice, pro gun nuts live in perfect harmony. And both groups are racist to boot. This delta wave is going to do some serious damage around here and nobody wants to believe that because we didn’t get hit hard last summer.
play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Here’s the announcement I’d make:
“As of October 1, 2021 90% of unused vaccine stocks that are above the number needed for second doses will be transferred to suppliers overseas to be used by people who want this vaccine; furthermore, your government will no longer pay for anything related to its use – you will have to purchase it on the market as supplies come available. At the same time, unvaccinated people without medical exemptions will be prohibited from commercial air travel that crosses state lines, all federal buildings and properties including military bases, and will further be prohibited to operate federally regulated air, rail, sea and trucking operations. No questions will be entertained at this time.”
opiejeanne
@Charluckles: Lake of the Ozarks covers farmland that used to be in my mother’s family. For many years after it was “drowned”, taller buildings like the bank and hotel in Linn Creek were still visible from the shore where people picnicked.
They were barely compensated for the land, with promises of jobs working on the dam and electricity for everyone in the area, which didn’t happen until the 1950s because the privately-owned dam’s owners could make more money selling the generated electricity to St Louis.
dr. bloor
@lowtechcyclist:
Factually incorrect. The on-deck level of leadership in the party has been developing for years now. The absence of headline-grabbing self-styled revolutionaries in that tier does not mean they don’t exist.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
In 2007, at Eschaton and places like that, there was a ‘dump Pelosi’ movement among the elder siblings of Rose Twitter after she said impeachment of Bush and Cheney was off the table. I used to ask who they wanted to replace her, Steny Hoyer or the evil RAHM! Been so long I can’t remember who they proposed. Probably Kucinich, the middle sibling between Nader and Bernie, who last I checked was running for mayor of Cleveland on a ‘tough-on-crime’ platform.
rikyrah
The children break my heart.
Barry
“Also, I’m not ready to ding the FDA for not approving the vaccine for kids, or to criticize the wording of our outreach, or any other of the many critiques I see in the media. ”
The people in the FDA are likely anticipating a literal Inquisition from the GOP, the minute they get hold of either House of Congress.
Constance Reader
“I really don’t see the political downside of much tougher action at the federal level,…”
The red states will refuse to comply and the GOP will raise metric shit-tons of money and inspire greater voter turn-out because of “government overreach” and “communism”. That’s the downside. I don’t understand how anyone paying attention couldn’t see that.
Peale
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Honestly, I think you’d get further by saying “On October 1, vaccines will now cost $500 so get them before the price goes up.” Then offer coupons for free vaccines after October 1. Then you can run with the “Every dose you take is a person in Mexico who dies” and get the crowd motivated by the ability to harm others. Between the 2 groups, we might get 5% increase in fully vaccinated adults.
Peale
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The hero of the day would have been Anthony Weiner because he gave that one speech once that we swooned over.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I’m good with ‘often behind the scenes.’ ‘Always’ is a whole ‘nother thing. In a democracy, it’s not exactly democratic for someone that few have heard of to become one of the most powerful persons in government.
I knew who Pelosi was for years before she became part of the House leadership. I only heard of Crowley when his name briefly got bandied about as the possible next Speaker.
Barry
@burnspbesq:
“Think it’s bad in the Confederacy now? Just wait until football (high school and college) starts up. Super-spreader events all weekend, every weekend, all over everywhere.”
I had not thought of that.
Quiltingfool
@opiejeanne: This is so true. Folks who owned the bottom land got screwed royally. Now, if you happened to be in the Duenke family, who bought or owned tons of ridge top land, which was useless for farming, you became multi-millionaires from selling their land for lake homes, resorts, etc.
On the other hand, the electric company that owns the dam and all the acres of land covered by water pays property taxes on every bit of it. School of the Osage gets huge amounts of tax money, and they have nice schools and pay their teachers very well. Camdenton school district benefits from this, too. Good schools, good pay. It doesn’t hurt that there are million dollar lake homes, too.
Another Scott
@Anonymous At Work:
1) The DoD moves slowly, but it does move. Mandates are coming and will be enforced (I am willing to bet).
2) The DoD has 2.8+M employees (civilian and military), some in their 80s (probably a few in their 90s), some (undoubtedly) with medical issues. They all can contribute.
Cheers,
Scott.
West of the Rockies
Preaching to the choir, I know, but goddammit why do wingers take such orgasmic delight in clinging to idiocy, even when there are clear signs that they know they’re wrong? The unabashed arrogance, the supreme hubris… is stupefying.
lowtechcyclist
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yeah, that was the problem, even then. And fourteen years later, she still may well be irreplaceable because nobody who isn’t 70+ has really had a chance to show what they can do.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Peale: White Guys Who Shout will always save the day. I still haven’t thrown out my Avenatti ’24 button
satby
@Baud: We always thought they’d turn out to vote too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@lowtechcyclist:
If they need to be given a chance to show what they can do, maybe that don’t have what the job requires.
opiejeanne
@Quiltingfool: My husband’s cousin owns a condo and a big boat on Lake of the Ozarks. We stayed with them for a few days in July 2019, and were driven around the lake in the boat by her husband to view the houses of the ridiculously wealthy.
We also witnessed what you described, as well as the poverty of the surrounding area, and not just poverty in the sense of having little money, although that was also apparent. The poverty of a poor education, of a poor understanding of the world outside their hollers and their churches, fear of people in other countries or even other counties, all of this was apparent. Oh sure, they all had a pickup parked next to the double-wide, that sat next to the family home which was falling down in pieces around them.
dr. bloor
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Hakeem Jeffries and Katherine Clark, doomed to ineptitude because Reasons.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Maybe my memory is going, but I don’t recall “Second in Line to the Speaker of the House” ever being something that people paid attention to.
dm
@lowtechcyclist: In other words, the same people who have been subject to urine tests for employment since the 1980s.
opiejeanne
@Quiltingfool: My mom’s relatives who sold that bottom land cheap were not the sharpest tools in the drawer. They were all so closely related that one of my distant cousins had grandparents who were double first cousins, on both sides. Thank goodness my direct line had the good sense to travel five miles down the road to find a wife who wasn’t already a cousin
I’m not sure the schools in the Macks Creek area put that money to such good use.
lowtechcyclist
@dr. bloor:
You mean like Pelosi herself was before she became part of the leadership? She got a good deal of ink back then. Guess she must’ve been one of those “headline-grabbing self-styled revolutionaries.”
Ksmiami
@Villago Delenda Est: so Darwin it is then…
dr. bloor
@lowtechcyclist:
So you have no awareness of anyone doing the job who is not in front of a cable teevee news camera all the time. Thank you for proving my point with your nonresponse response.
Ksmiami
@Barry: on the other hand lots of dead kids motivates suburban moms so…
Barry
@West of the Rockies: “Preaching to the choir, I know, but goddammit why do wingers take such orgasmic delight in clinging to idiocy, even when there are clear signs that they know they’re wrong? The unabashed arrogance, the supreme hubris… is stupefying.”
For some people, power (and joy) comes in the form of the lie. If you can make people believe things which hurt them, that is power. If you can make people repeat the lie even when they don’t believe it, that is power.
Barry
@Ksmiami: “@Barry: on the other hand lots of dead kids motivates suburban moms so…”
The problem is that hate moves much faster than love.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: She was! I’ve never lived within 2800 miles of Nancy Pelosi’s district, but I’ve known who she is since 1990 or so. She first came to my attention for her then-outlier support for gay rights, and I’ve admired her ever since.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Trying to remember if, during the Clinton impeachment, which is when I went from being somebody who followed politics to being a political junkie. I can’t remember if I knew who Nancy Pelosi was or not. Political cable TeeVee was just starting out, the blogosphere was just taking shape. But I know from the excerpts of Molly Ball’s recent biography that she was very active politically in the 80s and 90s, building a national network, fundraising and speaking and collecting chits
Ken
At the cost of forever after being viewed with suspicion by the rest of the family?
Matt McIrvin
I used to wonder what was taking so long about full FDA approval–but, as I understand it, the main difference from emergency authorization is that they’re not just certifying that the drug is safe and effective now, they’re certifying that it’s being produced in a sustainable manner so that it will continue to be safe and effective in the future. That involves looking at manufacturing and distribution processes. Other countries have had problems with that (hello Sputnik).
People are impatient about FDA approval because some organizations use it as a trigger for mandates, and under the circumstances they shouldn’t. But that’s not the FDA’s fault.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If I had to guess, I’d say I came to know who Pelosi was in the run-up to Iraq, when she was in opposition to so many pro-war Dems like Gephardt
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Matt McIrvin: Scott Gottleib was on NPR this morning, and I think he said he expects full approval of at least the Pfizer vaccine– he’s on the board– by the end of August.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think I first heard of Pelosi through wingnut propaganda that attempted to use her pro-gay rights positions to demonize her. Can’t remember exactly when the “San Francisco values” bugaboo became a thing on the right, but I’m pretty sure they meant Pelosi and gayness!
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Probably the same for me, although my memory is hazy.
trollhattan
The “underlying complication” of cooking for an endless string of unappreciative assholes, most likely. Although it does say “beloved” and one wonders what made him lovable, given they quickly got over it.
My eye doctor lost his receptionist after her husband died of covid and she moved in with family out of the area, so as to take care of their two young kids. He told me a good percentage of people he has told of this immediately respond with “what health conditions did he have?”
Some of it may be whistling past the graveyard but the rest is sheer pathological.
opiejeanne
@Ken: heh. Yes, that is a bit of a problem. Great grandpa Turner got his adult children to move to middle-of-nowhere Montana for FREE LAND! Starting in 1917. Grandpa Green moved his family there after his third farm when bust a couple of years later, but came back in a few years after that went bust, moved to the big city, Independence, and went to work for Standard Oil. All of that made them suspicious of us, but then Mom went and married someone from California, and I tell you what, we were all outsiders after that.
My husband’s cousin rode with us on a couple of our outings, visiting cemeteries and the area around the remaining family houses, and I had warned her that I was related to almost everyone in the area, some 300+ people. But she was still astonished when we stopped the car to talk to a woman who was fishing in the Little Niangua at Green’s Ford, and she told us she was a Green too.
The area fascinates me. It’s so pretty and I’ve seen the beautiful farm that great grandpa Turner homesteaded there, and gave up for more free land in Montana, with no water. The part of the family that moved there, stayed. Their children told me they cried the first time they visited Missouri because they’d never seen trees so tall and it scared them.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
“San Francisco liberal” seems to have been right behind “Hollywood elites” for as long as I can remember, as a way to tar either all of California or all the Pacific states. When your Huckabees say it, it always gets a “you’re so right!” response from the appreciative in-the-know audience.
See also, Vance, JD.
Quiltingfool
@opiejeanne: I live around this poverty. I taught in two rural school districts here (free lunch at 65% to give an idea of poverty level). I’ve seen children get on buses outside of “homes” that weren’t fit for livestock, let alone humans. One home had a blanket for the door – and in the yard was a door and frame leaning against a tree. I got nothing for that.
This is the land of generational poverty. As a teacher, I did my best to help kids improve their basic skills while learning science. How many did I help? I don’t know, but I hope it’s several! One thing I learned over a 26 year career is that many parents* don’t want their kids to go away to college. They want them to be “educated” but not enough for college. They want their children to stay; they don’t want to see grandchildren only on the holidays. Well, some are getting what they wished for…their children stayed, had crappy job prospects, turned to addictive behaviors (meth, hillbilly heroin or booze) and then the grandparents found themselves raising their grandkids. The parents? Opted out of raising kids or are in and out of jail, or, sadly, are dead.
What can be done about this? I honestly don’t know. My upbringing was solid middle class and it was understood that upon graduation, you went to college or got training for vocational jobs. So I had a very hard time wrapping my mind around the concept that parents didn’t push their children to get skills for good paying jobs, whether from college or vocational training. Or even join the military.
*There were kids who went to college and did well – not every parent I encountered had the no college attitude.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: “San Francisco” was definitely pejorative code for “gaaayyyyy” as far back as the 1970s, and I’m sure it goes further back than that. In the Vietnam era it also connoted filthy hippies.
Joegy
“Maybe seeing children intubated will change their minds”.
See: Newtown Elementary School Massacre.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
Eastern Montana? I recall as a kid being hauled to grandma’s in Iowa, from Seattle, being astonished it took part of three days to get across Montana. Western Montana was gorgeous and once past the Rockies, utter desolation for hour upon hour. And then, pondering it’s 100+ degrees in summer and -a bazillion degrees in winter even a little kid will ask “how does anybody live here?”
MomSense
@lowtechcyclist:
If you want to know why it’s so difficult to replace that generation of Democratic leaders, look to Reagan. Late boomers and Xers lost our damned minds. There are a ton of that age cohort in Republican leadership. Sometimes it feels like my high school nightmare will never end.
Baud
@MomSense:
We also lost of lot of “farm team” seats to the GOP starting in the 90s when the South and rural America shifted to the GOP in earnest.
PAM Dirac
@Matt McIrvin:
Basically correct. The EUA is limited to the duration of the emergency, so it can allow for a situation where the risk/benefit is favorable only when the risks are great. When the emergency is over and the risks are more normal, the approval goes away. It also can come with a number of conditions, including restricting the patient population and mandating regular reports. A full approval is essentially forever. It has to take into account risk/benefit in all possible risk situations. Obviously that will require more data, take longer, need more careful analysis, etc. I can see why people would feel that full approval means a greater safety margin, but to actually get that greater safety margin you have to go through the process. Just stamping it “Approved” doesn’t do a thing. And demanding that full approval be done on an emergency basis is flat out contradictory, not just in terms of meaning, but also legally.
Quiltingfool
@opiejeanne: Macks Creek school (only 1-K-12) didn’t get much lake money. I taught there for five years, no raise. I taught science 7-12. Oh, I could tell you stories!
And, yes, some of the folks around here are a little too close genetically. I once made a quip “You can’t breed two culls and get a thoroughbred” and it may have been somewhat true, but I am ashamed I said that, it was a cruel and arrogant remark. I had some outstanding students who had questionable family trees. Now, it’s not as common to marry “within” the family. Decent roads and cars made a big difference!
trollhattan
Promising news.
gwangung
@dr. bloor: Why isn’t Ted Lieu mentioned in these discussions? He IS part of leadership AND he gets lots of attention.
Quiltingfool
@opiejeanne: Huh, a Green are you? I taught a whole family of Greens at Macks Creek. All of the kids had red hair and were smart, too. The whole family are hard workers and the parents expected the kids to do well. The Green extended family is rather well respected around here. I’ve never heard anything negative about the clan.
I love the Little Niangua. I live pretty close to it. It is pretty around here, that’s why I’ve stayed.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: Of course, Pfizer is trying to pump their stock here–I doubt this will lead to any policy recommendations immediately. But the indications are interesting.
edit: also interesting that they don’t mention Delta, but the time it takes to do this research is probably important.
Betsy
@Betty Cracker: The patriarchy, right or left side of it, will always point out that powerful women are too old to be where they are, doing a great job.
different-church-lady
@trollhattan:
Betty Cracker
@Betsy: I agree. It’s especially galling because women of Pelosi’s era were expected to defer their ambition until the kids grew up.
At the same time, the Dem House leadership team really did have a gerontocracy problem that they’ve thankfully begun to address.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Quiltingfool: I am very familiar with that attitude. They want their kids to be financially stable, but don’t want their children to get above their parent’s station in life. Conservatives are hierarchical. Parents must be the authority, even with adult children. When you leave and get an education, you not only deny them influence over and access to the grandchildren, you also undermine their authority because you know things they do not.
Betsy
@MomSense: Yes, so much this!
Then add to that — after the Reagan 80s and the Gingrich 1990s, the Iraq War vote took some of the shine off so many mid- and top-tier Dems during the 00s.
I knew at the time that the war vote was, in part, a deeply cynical Rovian maneuver to dirty up Dems who at the time simply could not continue to have a political existence if they voted no.
It served the double Republican purpose of plain old war mongering, and sinking key Dems political careers.
dr. bloor
@gwangung:
If you’re going to look to senior-level committee chairs, you get a much longer list of folks to choose from–Lieu, Schiff, etc. I look to Clark and Jeffries because they’re in deputy-level positions where they’re essentially learning how to make the legislative sausage. Counting votes, striking deals, well-timed leaning in, and herding cats are essential skills to being an effective leader.
Being able to throw out a line like “McCarthy is a moron” in an offhand manner, while deeply gratifying, is pretty close to the bottom of the list of qualities that make her a great Speaker.
lowtechcyclist
@dr. bloor:
Good grief, the old ‘excluded middle’ fallacy. Either they’re in front of a TV camera all the time, or they’re invisible, nothing in between.
And that’s on top of your ‘if you know about them, they must be a self-styled revolutionary’ bullshit.
Like I said, I knew about Pelosi for a long time before she was in the leadership. You don’t seem to be up to answering my question of whether that made her a ‘self-styled revolutionary’ back in the day.
I’m not gonna bother to deal anymore with your sort of foolishness.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
I would have had to become aware of her back in the 1980s, because up to 1988 I was living somewhere where I could read the WaPo daily. (You didn’t have to be in the DC area for this; for instance, when I was in Newport News in SE Virginia, I was able to get the WaPo every day.) When I moved to South Carolina, then to Bristol VA/TN, it was like dropping into a news vacuum in that pre-Web era, and I doubt I’d have come across her name then.
But yeah, she was one of the good ones on a number of issues before her stands were popular. I was relieved when she beat out Hoyer for the House Dem leadership.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
If people will refuse to wear a condom so their dick doesn’t turn green and fall off it should be no surprise they won’t get a vaccine so they don’t end up coughing their lungs up.
Want to bet those two bartenders were instructed by their boss to do that, lest some customer realized that that dying over an over priced glass of beer is a really dumb way to go.
WhatsMyNym
Current House Democratic Leadership –
Average Age: 56 years old (The average age of House Democratic leadership in the 116th Congress was 57 years old)
Average Terms Served in House: 6 terms (12 years)
Gender Composition: 11 men, 5 women
Racial Composition: 8 White, 6 African American, 1 Hispanic/Latino, 1 Asian/Pacific American
– – –
Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-CA-31) House Democratic Caucus Vice Chairman
Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX-32) Caucus Representative to House Leadership
Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-IL-17) House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Co-Chair
Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-PA-8) House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Co-Chair
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA-5) House Assistant Speaker
Whip James “Jim” Clyburn (D-SC-6) House Majority Whip
Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI-12) House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Co-Chair
Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD-5) House Majority Leader
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY-8) House Democratic Caucus Chairman
Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY-17) House Freshman Representative to Leadership
Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA-13) House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Co-Chair
Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA-33) House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Co-Chair
Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY-18) Chair of DCCC
Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO-2) House Democratic Policy and Communications Committee Co-Chair
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) Speaker of the House
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA-15) House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee Co-Chair
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WhatsMyNym: everything’s a blur, especially the line between facts and “people are/were saying” after the last five years, but as I recall Pelosi planned to step down from the Leadership after the ’16 elections but she looked around at all the (white) men who came out on top and felt she had to stick around. And I say thank god.
Soprano2
@Quiltingfool: I’m supposed to come to Tan-Tar-A for the MWEA Conference the second week of August. I’m figuring any day we’ll get an e-mail cancelling it.
mali muso
@Quiltingfool:
@opiejeanne:
Just dropping in to say that I went to high school in the Lake area for two years and graduated from Camdenton High. This was in the late 90s. Such an odd collection of people from what I recall (in the high school). Plenty of uber rich kids whose parents owned lakefront property, some of the blue collar kids whose parents worked all those summer businesses and a handful of farm kids. Super duper white. High school football was such a religion that the local church brought the all-state winning team to the Sunday service for a special “thanks jeebus for our winning team” thing. I hightailed it out of there as soon as I graduated and never went back. Unsurprising to see that it’s now Trump central.
Btw, in my recollection Macks Creek made their money via that infamous speed trap at the bottom of the long hill.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
just because she can….
to be clear, she still supports the bipartisan deal, not the reconciliation bill to follow
we’ll see how this unfolds. The optimist in me wants to believe this is 17 dimensional chess to get Rs to vote for the BIP, but I trust this one even less than I do Manchin
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Climate change, elder care, expanded Medicare… gotta be tough sells in Sun City
Earl
@Frankensteinbeck:
A small correction: “Fuck you I don’t wanna.”
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Could be a request for some AZ earmarks.
leeleeFL
Kay, my 13 y.o GrandDaughter will never go back to school. She has reactive airway disease, and therefore, any of these respiratory viruses can kill her. Not an option. She is unusual, I know. But I will bet there are more than we guess. I aan only hope that Virtual School can provide a reasonable education.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: God, she’s the worst. I’m glad I don’t live in AZ because I’d have to puke every time I had to vote for that awful hack.
opiejeanne
@trollhattan: Nailed it. The descendants still live there. I have photos of the homestead, of the family at a birthday party in an otherwise desolate landscape, next to the little tarpaper shack they all lived in as they moved there.
And there was another dam that they all got jobs working on, and then went bust again after it was finished.
Great grandpa Turner lived to be 95, never learned to read or write, and prided himself on being able to take a train to KC, MO without help. (I’m sure the porters helped him
flickr.com/gp/snowwhite/8hNa10
gwangung
@dr. bloor: I think part of my point is that we should look beyond the usual suspects, as indeed, getting ink isn’t a major part of leadership’s job.
I was just pointing out there are folks who can do both, but are getting ignored, which invalidates their point.
John Revolta
The fucking privilege and arrogance (and racism?) of this guy in the story makes my blood boil. “Oh, we don’t know what else was wrong with him *ahem lazy drunk AHEM*”. But us, we’re virtuous! We WORK OUT and that virus won’t come around US you betcha!” Fuck these people.
glc
PSA (LA): lataco.com/bars-asking-vaccine-proof-covid/
Kay
@leeleeFL:
There are some and absolutely kids with chronic health issues need accomodations but we have lots and lots of information on virtual school for kids and most do better live in school. Ohio has had a “virtual academy” for 20 years. We know most kids don’t do well entirely online. It’s pretty much a disaster for most of them.
They should be strongly enouraged to go back to school. This is really bad for them. It’s harming them. Their parents have to work. They cannot do two full time jobs and the truth is a lot of parents are not very good teachers of academic subjects. I am willing to admit this as a parent. I’m bad at it. The whole idea that anyone can just sashay in and magically become a teacher overnight is nonsense. Let’s all respect the work that people do and stop insisting any of us can do it as well as any other. That isn’t true. Just because one went to school doesn’t mean one is skilled teacher, anymore than any person riding on a bus should be driving it.
Most of them want to go back. They don’t actually want to conduct their entire lives from the kitchen table. If we have to move heaven and earth lets do that and get them back into school. They’re important.
Kay
@leeleeFL:
The bottom 10% at our high school just simply stopped participating. No one is home monitoring them, they were poor students to begin (and also poor people- low income) and they just dropped off the face of the earth. That’s the high school. I can’t even imagine the little kids who were basically home alone for 6 months.
We can’t do this to them. They won’t get back up. They have no room for error. They barely hang on by their fingernails as it is. They’ll fall.
opiejeanne
@Quiltingfool: Mom was a Green. My grandparents had very little schooling, Grandpa only went through the second grade but he was really smart and read voraciously, self-educated. Grandma went through the fifth grade, and had what I would call native intelligence. She knew how to add and subtract, but she lacked logical reasoning.
The Green side of the family was a mixture of smart and less than. Most of them figured out not to marry their close kin, but most of the ones I’ve met were pretty sharp. They used to have reunions every other summer when we visited KC. Took 3 days to drive from LA, back before we had AC in any of our cars.
The rest of the area names are cousins: the Warrens, the Moulders, the Creaches.
The Russells and the Greens were the family that I know had some close marriages; the two paterfamilias (the two Williams) came from Virginia around 1820, were best friends since childhood, had a bunch of kids, and lived next door to each other and their kids married each other. Then their grandchildren married each other. Old William Russell was a judge, so I suspect that he was pretty smart.
Instead of marrying one of his cousins, my great grandfather married a woman who walked from North Carolina with her family at age 13, after the Civil War. Caroline Coffey. The Coffeys had a dairy last time I visited the area, not far from Flint Springs. We needed a guide to find the Turner farm, still in the family. The mail carrier for the area led us.
H-Bob
@Betty Cracker: The “San Francisco values” crap started with the 1984 Democratic Convention that was held in San Francisco (when Mondale was nominated).
Kay
@leeleeFL:
I’ll pitch in. As I said I’m a bad teacher, so no help there but if they tell me what they need I’m on board.
Whatever they want- masks, vaccines, ventlitation systems, alternate locations, hold classes outdoors until it’s 30 degrees, a special tax levy, but get them back into live school before we lose 10 million of them.
opiejeanne
@mali muso: Yes, the speed trap. Got my grandpa and both uncles, but not my dad for some reason, and they knew the thing was there.
The state shut down the speed trap around 2003? and there was no revenue for it to be an incorporated town, but they couldn’t get enough people to attend a meeting to vote on unincorporating, until they sent out a notice that the meeting was going to be about changing the name to Baghdad. Everyone showed up, a good laugh was had by the mayor, and the vote was taken to unincorporated.
Kay
@leeleeFL:
This isn’t selfish with me. I mean usually it is but this one time it isn’t. My youngest graduated last year.
I’m already seeing the results of this in juvenile court. They’re not mature, they have no supervision or support at home and school is a kind of lifeline for them. They say they hate it- they don’t mean it and even if they do mean it they don’t know what’s good for them so we can’t let them drive the bus. They’ll run it right into a tree. It shoukd be treated as a threat to their safety and well being, because that’s what it is.
Quiltingfool
@Soprano2: You mean Margaritaville? Lol! Been to Tan-Tar-A many, many times for education conferences.
If your conference folks are smart, they’ll cancel. Not sure how the venue will react, though.
Elizabelle
@Kay: That’s a great point.
Non-vaccinated asshats out there: get the effing vaccine. So that we can send the students (no vaccine for anyone below grade 7/age 12 just yet), their teachers, school bus drivers, the lunch ladies, and the parents BACK TO WORK. Everyone who comes in contact with kids and the public.
Get vaccinated. Get kids back into the schools. Keep them out of the courts. [Keep their teachers out of the courts!]
Get vaccinated. Give kids their future.
It’s not all about YOU, you unvaccinated asshats.
— off soapbox
Quiltingfool
@mali muso: You remember correctly! The infamous speed trap! Macks Creek school was supposed to get 50% of the take (state law, I think) but didn’t get a dime, what a surprise. There was some hinky shit going on; but it finally got shut down.
Camdenton school does have an odd social mix. I remember hearing about a 16 year old student getting a Bentley for her birthday. My comment to that was, “Where do you go from there? How do you top that?” The top social set at the rural school I taught at were folks with a middle class job who camped at Pomme de Terre lake for vacation.
RaflW
The two newer threads don’t seem appropriate, so parking this here for now. Will probably bring it up again this evening.
Sinema is now preening and saying she’ll bust the Infrastructure package. Mitch McConnell is, god help us, “pleased.” How much more evidence do we need that she’s on the fkking take? She’s bucking the signature package of the head of the party and our President. Damn.
germy
Quiltingfool
@Kay: Kids do need school. I know, they may say they hate it, but it is, for many, a safe space and a hot meal. For some of my students, it was a place where adults were kind (their home lives were not pleasant). Lord, some of those kids were hot messes, but most of us teachers treated them with caring and respect – even though we had to have “come to Jesus” talks with them on occasion!
Quiltingfool
@opiejeanne: Oh, my, I taught some Moulder kids! You want to talk about smart! They were aces! The Moulder clan also well respected around here.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@different-church-lady: the ggallin rule.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Betty Cracker: hopefully not.
though i do hope sfo dems find somebody to run that can keep shahid buttar’s dobie gillis ass out of congress.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Delk: the ghost of adam lanza & jeffrey epstein in the machine.
MontyTheClipArtMongoose
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: the meat is murder platform, no doubt. unites morrissey, david frum, & moby.
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: I’m with you on that. Sinema’s a fucking brat who refuses to realize she’s in the United States Senate, and not the Arizona state Senate.
Geminid
@Kay: Virginia Governor Ralph Northam is proposing that $250 million from the American Rescue Plan Act be devoted to upgrading HVAC systems in Virginia schools. The idea is that localities will match this funding with their own Rescue Act funds. The General Assembly meets in special session next week, and key leaders are on board with this initiative. Hopefully other states will do this too.
WaterGirl
@germy: Why are we promoting a tweet with a message from T****?
Ohio Mom
@leeleeFL:
I am very late to this thread so you may not see this. Your granddaughter should be eligible for a Special Ed IEP (individualized education plan), under the category, Other Health Impairment. That may help get the most she can out of school because she will be able to get accommodations and modifications.
Sorry for all the jargon, I am too tired right now to think very much. Anyway, good luck to her!
cain
@Betty Cracker:
Dammit – McConnell is probably going to be pleased as punch – on the other hand, he seems to be at death’s door already.
Elizabelle
@cain: Satan needs to call him home.
Chief Oshkosh
Agreed with others that the fuckbrains have created a situation where “coercion” is the only answer. How to do that? Well, many have said that the federal government can’t do that. I’m not so sure. I read elsewhere on this nearly-top-10,000 blog that there are federal laws that the president can enact that essentially makes vaccination mandatory for all. Apparently last time it was used was in the 1919 pandemic, though I don’t know that it was for vaccination per se.
I’m down with “Bullet or needle, dipshit. Your choice.” as being the most freedom these dipwads should be allowed. However, as I haven’t worked out where to bury all the bodies, I’d stretch a point and allow for a system where people who have no vaccination documentation get a large federal tax. It would be done as just another 1040 schedule form. We can come up with some pretty decent dollar amounts for how much these jackasses are costing society. Within the US, basically all variant D hospitalizations and after-care are due to the boneheads. We can also estimate the impact of the surge on slow comebacks of various businesses. We can also estimate the costs of continued mitigation. Add it up, divide by the number of Trump voters, and it gives a rough estimate of what each of this worthless meat units are costing the rest of us. Multiply that number by 10, because why not, these knuckle draggers are innumerate, and then hike their taxes. And yes, part of the estimate is the additional cost of expanding the IRS resources to cover the enforcement of the new taxation. Those who can’t pay get sent to the former Walmarts used by Trump’s ICE and BP to warehouse immigrant children.
If we’d do this, we’d be Covid-free this time next year.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Mart: One piece of the puzzle for why people can be so *evilly* stupid is, they think masks are a sign of personal fear – “I wear this mask because I fear Covid-19”.
Some *might* understand the attitude of “I wear this mask because I could have been exposed, and if so, I want to take every reasonable precaution to ensure I don’t expose anyone else.” Those who do among that crowd know in their hearts they are lying, and just haven’t managed to connect how their behavior is leading to suffering and death. (Or maybe they really don’t care?)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Looks like the wheels, axels and quarter-panels are falling off Nina Turner’s internal polling.
Here’s hoping for a firey crash as a big finish.
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Oh, I hope so. We need Shontel Brown. An actual, you know, Democrat.
Geminid
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Cleveland has a clear channel news station. I’ll probabably tune in on Tuesday. They’ll at least have updates on the hour.
Atlanta’s WSB had extensive coverage of the Georgia Senate runoffs last January 5. I did not stay up too late, and they did not “call” the races that night anyway. But I was happy to hear one of the correspondents report that he had canvassed rural Republican leaders, and said they were “chagrined” at turnout. When the votes were finally counted, Ossoff’s total dropped 100,000 votes from November, but Perdue’s total dropped 200,000. Warnock’s numbers tracked slightly ahead of Ossoff’s.
opiejeanne
@Quiltingfool: They own my great grandmother’s house now, and were renting it out to a couple of teachers who worked at your school. The house is at the turnoff for Bannister Holler (Hollow, really). 105 Kolb Hollow Road. My mother was born there.
flic.kr/p/2gttTm4