Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Compromise? There is no middle ground between a firefighter and an arsonist.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

People are complicated. Love is not.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

“Let’s not pretend [Trump] wants to engage in high-minded discourse.”

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Meanwhile, in Clown Cuckoo Land…

Meanwhile, in Clown Cuckoo Land…

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The Republican hacks on Florida’s State Board of Education (all appointed by our shitty governor) are meeting to deal with the public health risk posed by…school mask mandates:

I suspect the real agenda is to revive RegeneRon DeSantis’s sinking political fortunes through misdirection and chaos. Please FSM, let every single one of these assholes reap what they sow. In abundance! Amen.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

122Comments

  2. 2.

    dr. bloor

    Can’t wait for Rudy G and the rest of Team Kraken to argue sick is healthy and healthy is sick before some poor judge.

  4. 4.

    Barbara

    Do your really think his fortunes are sinking? I do think his plan (as well as Kristy Noem’s) was to brazen out resistance to public health measures and claim victory as the pandemic receded. (“You see? I was right — there was no need to make everyone wear a mask or get vaccinated. Freedom!”) But that plan seems to have been thwarted by the Delta variant, because the pandemic is not receding in states like Florida where huge numbers of people are refusing to get vaccinated. I just wish I was more optimistic that it will actually boomerang on him or Noem.

  7. 7.

    JoyceH

    If I had school-aged kids in Florida, I’d pull them out of school immediately. These noisy anti-maskers that disrupt the meetings get all the press bu they’re a significant minority. Time for a parents’ strike.

  8. 8.

    Just Chuck

    Are they going to send state troopers in to tear the masks off kids faces? That’s probably next.

  10. 10.

    Betty Cracker

    @Barbara: I don’t trust polls, but the data we have does seem to indicate DeSantis is losing support and that a clear majority of Floridians disagree with his insane handling of the COVID school safety issue. I’m in no way confident that this giant clusterfuck will prevent him from sailing to reelection in 2022 — I still think he’s more likely to than not. But I do think Florida Republicans, Fox News, etc., understand the political danger and are trying to shore up support.

  11. 11.

    Just Chuck

    @Barbara:

    Do your really think his fortunes are sinking?

    Not when the plurality of voters in the state are murderous assholes.

  12. 12.

    Scout211

    https://floridapolitics.com/archives/443020-lockdown-desantis-mask/

    This one is from a few weeks ago, but it’s a classic.  Did you know we are “muzzling” are littles in the schools?  Oh my, such a shame! //

    In a media availability in Fort Pierce, DeSantis said regarding schools that students would “be in person and live and learn like normal kids” and that any idea of a federal mask mandate would be a non-starter in Florida, where kids like his 3-year-old would not be “muzzled.”

    “There’s been talk about people potentially advocating at the federal level imposing compulsory masks on kids. We’re not doing that in Florida,” DeSantis said. “We need our kids to be able to be kids. We need our kids to be able to breathe.”

    “Parents obviously can put their kids to go to school however they want, but there shouldn’t be any coercive mandates on our schools,” DeSantis said, warning against a “campaign from Washington to try to change that.”

    “At the end of the day, we’ve got to start putting our kids first. We’ve got to look out for their education. Is it really comfortable? Is it really healthy for them to be muzzled and have their breathing obstructed every day in school? I don’t think it is,” DeSantis said.

    bold added because, sick and hospitalized or muzzled?  He is the expert! //

  13. 13.

    MattF

    @Barbara: I think you need to look at how this affects voters on the margins— e.g., suburban independents. Most of the Venn diagram of voters have made up their minds one way or another, and DeSantis (and Abbott) are aiming their actions directly at the Trumpy R base. Time will tell, but I think that’s a mistake.

  15. 15.

    Peale

    Well I guess we can be glad that they haven’t decided to force them to remove their masks and take de-wormer as a “prophylaxis”.

    Yet.

  16. 16.

    The Dangerman

    @raven: 

    Fuck. I was a bigtime NG fan for years. Maybe saw her 10 times. She’s a big reason I said fuck no to Seattle (went to an outdoor concert on July 2nd in my down jacket and I said I’m gone; it was so cold the backup orchestra had to leave for fear of damaging instruments and she proceeded to put on a great show).

    OVOR one of my favorite disks.

  17. 17.

    TriassicSands

    @mrmoshpotato: 

    It’s a well-known scientific fact that coating one’s hands in filth and grime is 107% effective in warding off COVID-19¹ infection. Mammalian feces are especially useful. Smearing them on one’s face will also prevent the common cold, acne, pancreatic cancer, athlete’s foot, and dengue fever. The jury is still out on heart disease, measles, and toenail fungus.

    ¹ In fact, it’s just as effective for COVID-1 through COVID-666!

  18. 18.

    Scout211

    And it’s not just the students:

    https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/08/13/broward-educators-lose-battle-with-covid/

    The vicious virus, in less than one day this week, between Tuesday and Wednesday, claimed the lives of three Broward County school teachers and one of its assistant teachers.

    Broward Teachers Union President Anna Fusco said, “Within a 24-hour span, we had an assistant teacher pass away, a teacher at her school pass away, an elementary teacher pass away and another teacher at a high school.”

  19. 19.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling*s Dog

    @raven: Ah, damn, damn.

     

    Now I find myself on the mountainside

    Where the rivers change direction

     

    Across the Great Divide

  22. 22.

    Roger Moore

    @MattF:

    I think you need to look at how this affects voters on the margins— e.g., suburban independents.

    This.  Yes, there is a large pool of people who will vote for the Republican no matter what, just as there is a large pool who will vote for the Democrat no matter what.  But there are people who can potentially swing one way or the other, and a disastrous pandemic response is likely to make up their minds for them.  And for all that people talk about DeSantis cruising to reelection, he won a close election last time.  As someone pointed out, his margin of victory in 2018 was smaller than the number of Floridians who have died of COVID.

  23. 23.

    Mike in NC

    Running against ‘renegade school boards’ in 2022 will be electoral gold for Republicans in Congress. Or perhaps not.

  24. 24.

    PsiFighter37

    The virus raging in the South has made me put a kibosh on one of my planned business trips in September. I suspect my upcoming trip to Denver is likely to be my last business trip that takes me out of the immediate NYC area for the rest of the year, possibly until we are through winter. Who knows. JFC.

  27. 27.

    sab

    @JoyceH: We kept our autistic grand-daughter out of school last year. She is 7 and barely functioning as a 5 year old because no socialization and not much school on line. How do we keep her out another year? She’d end up probably alive but 9 years old functioning as 5.  Next year 10 functioning as 5. How much can she catch up? Deprive her of her whole life potential to protect her from a grade school age  pandemic. This is the actual choice my step-daughter is looking at for her child.

  29. 29.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    I suspect DeSantis bigger concern that if he were be pro-vac and mask he would get primaried by his own parties bat shit crazy delusional majority.

  30. 30.

    Anonymous At Work

    Is anyone going to comment on the irony of “It’s safe to be in person in a small room all day” meeting being held by conference call?  Why can’t they hold it in-person?  Are they behold to Fauci’s warnings???

  32. 32.

    Wapiti

    @JustRuss: Unvaccinated, but… would they have gotten the shot if they needed to to keep teaching? Timely mandates probably could have saved those lives.

  33. 33.

    The Dangerman

    @raven: Yup. First time I saw her was also Seattle (Bumbershoot Festival) and I was very close to front row. I think I misted up to one her songs (damn dust in the air) and she looked down, locked eyes, and smiled. I was hooked at that point.

    John Prine and her should be a helluva show on the other side.

  36. 36.

    Scout211

    Besides bringing in a truckload of monoclonal antibodies to treat a few folks in the hospitals, DeSantis seems to have boxed himself into a corner.  All those Republican Governors that boldly declared no mask/vaccination mandates in their state did so mostly when all the case numbers had gone down and we all were looking at an easy summer.  But now that the case numbers are way up (especially in their states), they still have no plans to back down.  That is not in the Republican playbook for winning elections these days.  It’s better to be wrong (and cause countless people to get sick and die) while looking tough than  to back down and look weak.

    It seems he is pushing this so far that I wonder if he isn’t half hoping that the courts in Florida will find his executive order unconstitutional or in conflict with the laws in place to protect children. If the courts strike it down, he can then still look “tough” but whine about the “activist judges” or some such nonsense.

  37. 37.

    raven

    From “It’s a Hard Life”

     

    A cafeteria line in Chicago
    The fat man in front of me
    Is calling black people trash to his children
    He’s the only trash here I see
    And I’m thinking this man wears a white hood
    In the night when his children should sleep
    But, they slip to their window and they see him
    And they think that white hood’s all they need

  38. 38.

    Ohio Mom

    In the best of times, schools are germ trading centers. Anyone who has had young children knows they bring home head colds all the time, and also the occasional stomach bug.

    This year a lot of them are going to bring home Covid, especially with so many schools all over, not just Florida, refusing to step up on masking. I predict an early start to the winter wave.

    (Sob, I don’t want to be stuck at home again.)

  39. 39.

    Barbara

    @Wapiti: Something like five out of six employees of an IT department of a Florida city contracted Covid, and two died.  The only one who didn’t get sick was vaccinated. All the rest were not.

    Anyone who professes to be more afraid of the vaccine than the disease is probably hopeless.

  40. 40.

    Mike in NC

    Last time we drove down to Florida the tourist information stops gave out free samples of fresh-squeezed orange or grapefruit juice. DeathSantis should replace that stuff with chlorine bleach.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @sab: There’s not a good choice anywhere in there.  All because of a bunch of ignorant, selfish and evil people who can not, or will not, recognize that what we do individually affects other people or that we have an obligation not to hurt the people around us.

  42. 42.

    Ken

    I’m wondering how DeSantis and local school boards will react if there’s a major outbreak in a district. Mississippi schools opened about two weeks ago, and many have already had to close. One high school had 40% of students in quarantine, and has decided to go virtual for the rest of the year. Will Florida be as sensible?

  43. 43.

    Steeplejack

    @Betty Cracker:

    The Tampa Bay Times just obtained 1,250 pages of emails between Fox and DeSantis showing a clear pattern of conspiring to boost his profile and image for a 2024 run. Between the 2020 election and Feb 21, Fox requested DeSantis appear a stunning 113 times.
    https://t.co/auDuFfNyXv

    — Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 13, 2021

  44. 44.

    WaterGirl

    @Ken: Maybe they recognize that it will be a disaster but they are willing to live with that because they think they can blame it on Biden for not controlling the pandemic?

  45. 45.

    Betty Cracker

    @Roger Moore: True, and I think there’s something to the notion that the clown show is alienating independents and suburbanites. Maybe that’ll be enough.

    But in 2018, DeSantis ran as a mostly unknown House backbencher vs. a mostly unknown Panhandle mayor for an open seat. In 2022, he’ll be an incumbent who is a national figure with a national media organization touting him as the great white GOP hope. In a state that seems to be trending redder, no less. It would be dangerous to underestimate him, IMO.

  48. 48.

    Kay

    @JoyceH:

    They want a parents strike. They want to divide the schools into two warring factions, just like they did with CRT.

    I personally think they miscalculated. Most parents want kids in school. They’ll do whatever it takes to make that happen. The schools are very clearly saying the purpose of the masks is to hold down infections and keep the schools open. Once again they’re mistaking a mirror for a window.

  49. 49.

    Bill Arnold

    @Steeplejack:

    The Tampa Bay Times just obtained 1,250 pages of emails between Fox and DeSantis showing a clear pattern of conspiring to boost his profile and image for a 2024 run.

    Much of the Florida press is not friendly to the homicidal aspects of DeSantis’s MAGA antics.

  50. 50.

    PsiFighter37

    @Betty Cracker: 100% agree that it’ll be tough to underestimate him. That said, I do wonder if there will be any dropoff – without TFG pumping him up (he’s already jealous, the orange manboy), he may be more vulnerable. I think the great unknown is whether or not the low-propensity voters that the GOP relied on heavily in the 2016-2020 election cycles will come out again. Without their snake oil conman ginning up the dumbass masses, the Republicans could be set up for a huge disappointment.

    The main issue is, nobody knows how to model / predict this, in an era of low response rates to polling. And Democrats possibly face an issue on their side of typical disengagement in non-presidential years.

  51. 51.

    hueyplong

    @Betty Cracker: Hard to disagree with the idea that DeSantis will brazen it out and rely on propaganda regardless of the death toll.

    They now know they can get a decent percentage of the electorate to believe anything.

  52. 52.

    wvng

    @wvng: on one of the Nanci Griffith fan pages, this remembrance: Bob Winger

    We saw her twice: opening for John Prine at Carnegie Hall (1987 or 1988) and again at Park West in Chicago (1989). She was fantastic. At the Carnegie Hall concert, when they returned together for the encore, Guy Clark strolled up the main aisle, jumped on the stage and joined in. All are gone now.

  53. 53.

    Kay

    United Teachers of Los Angeles, the union that represents LAUSD educators, voted overwhelmingly in support of the vaccine mandate.

    There goes the latest lazy moochers trying to dodge work talking point. Those have a shelf life of like 24 hours.

  54. 54.

    piratedan

    I just find all of this madness discouraging, we have what are supposed to be public servants, acting in the public interest telling people to ignore all scientific evidence to the contrary and commit to unsafe behavior.

    For political gain… political advantage… I would adore someone to sit down and just calmly ask the Governor, if masking doesn’t help, if you’re not promoting people to take a vaccine, assuring them that the risks to their health by doing so are warranted, then really, just what the fuck is your plan for dealing with the fact that you have nary an ICU bed available in your state for anyone who suffers from any illness/accident over the next 7 to 10 days…

    Feel free to share with us, how you hope to deal with that, Governor, if you please.

    If your game plan is to sue the school districts for attempting to protect their students, show us how sending kids back to school, in this environment is a good thing.  Feel free to show your work.

    It’s only a matter of time before some aggrieved parent who loses a kid to this disease doesn’t show up to one these performances and tries to shoot DeSantis or Abbott dead, but hell at this point, I wouldn’t be shocked if that’s not an unspoken hope of these Fascists as an excuse for even more stupidity.

  56. 56.

    dm

    @Scout211: I understand that despite being festooned with “whereas”, most of Desantis’s “executive orders” are mere theatre, with no actual force.

    In other news, I think it’s interesting that Rand Paul’s wife has been an investor in a company that produces covid treatments since Feb. 2020 (https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/rand-paul-wife-investment-stocks-gilead-remdesivir.html). So what Paul has been doing when he attacks masks, vaccines, and Dr. Fauci, is drumming up business for that company.

  57. 57.

    Kathleen

    @Kay: I subscribe to the Cincinnati Business Courier, which is one of the most outstanding news publications anywhere. Yesterday’s edition featured an interesting take on John Cranley and his run for governor. I hope you can read it:

    Link

  58. 58.

    Mary G

    @raven: Same, fuck no. Such a pure voice. RIP Nanci. “Late Night Grande Hotel” always makes me tear up.

    About DeSantis, I don’t follow many righties on Twitter, but some. The moms are simply furious, anger like the Women’s March, that they have no choice between sending their children into a pit of virus and going homeschool.

  60. 60.

    Bill Arnold

    Language re opinions towards the “I have the Right To Kill Random People” crowd is getting real-er in the press. (Bold mine.)
    Point of View: Time to give DeSantis, Republicans some of their own medicine to fight COVID (Palm Beach Post, Joan Friedenberg, Aug 13, 2021)

    Let’s be clear. The “freedom” he is extolling here is your “right” to infect others with COVID. Remember: We can wear a mask to protect ourselves somewhat, but when all people wear them, we do so to protect others from being infected by us — those of us who are asymptomatic but contagious.
    So by insisting that students and faculty need not wear masks, DeSantis is really empowering COVID, not Florida’s residents. He is taking away your “right” not to be infected by members of his base who reject the CDC guidelines and refuse to wear masks.

    (I use a plugin called Cookie Remover to reset the views counters; works for this site.)

  63. 63.

    Gin & Tonic

    My dear wife works only occasionally (“semi-retired”), in a hospital, which is suddenly seeing an influx of delta cases, 100% of whom are unvaccinated. She was on duty today, when the directive  came down from management to all staff: get vaccinated or get fired. That’s your choice.

  64. 64.

    scav

    DeSantis & Abbattoire are loosing visible control of their states — do they imagine it will buff their tough guy images calling out the National Guard to rip masks off kindergartners?

  66. 66.

    New Deal democrat

    In other Florida news, beginning Tuesday the State has changed the way it counts COVID deaths, assigning them to the day they occurred rather than the day reported.

    The effect will be that the most current numbers will likely always artificially show a declining trend, only to be revised up days later.

  67. 67.

    trollhattan

    @The Dangerman:

    That’s the “old Seattle.” The new Seattle is hot, hot, hot. (Fun fact: cooler in Sac today than Seattle.)

    In Covid news, this could suck.

    There is now mounting evidence that mRNA-based vaccines such as Pfizer’s and Moderna’s lose potency over time and especially against the Delta variant, and that the Pfizer vaccine’s efficacy drop is significantly more dramatic. The Mayo Clinic study noted a wide shortfall in the mRNA vaccines’ ability to prevent infections among patients using the Mayo Clinic Health System for the month of July, when Delta variant cases made up more than 70% of new local infections in its home state of Minnesota, compared with earlier in the year. Between January and July, Moderna’s jab was 86% effective at preventing infection in this population while Pfizer’s was 76% effective. But for July alone, those numbers fell to 76% for Moderna and 42% for Pfizer, and the researchers observed similar drops for the Pfizer shot outside of Minnesota in states with high COVID counts such as Florida. (On a brighter note, both the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines still proved highly effective at preventing the need for COVID infection-related hospitalization at 92% and 85% efficacy, respectively.)

    Vhttps://fortune.com/2021/08/11/pfizer-covid-vaccine-delta-variant-low-effectiveness-stock-falls/

  68. 68.

    Betty Cracker

    @Kay: That’s my sense too — it’s a miscalculation. When there are massive COVID outbreaks at schools, kids who were exposed will have to quarantine, with all the downstream impact on them and their parents, which will piss everyone off. They can’t just stop testing or say fuck it, come to school anyway, can they? I just don’t see how this ends well — from a health and safety perspective OR a political perspective for the idiots who are creating warring factions.

  69. 69.

    topclimber

    @sab: Any chance of home-schooling with a group of like-minded parents who mask their kids?

    A bit OT, but maybe if college grads could work off their student loans by providing community service, you could get some help.

  70. 70.

    Yutsano

    @Betty Cracker:  Let’s just hope this doesn’t turn into a hold my beer moment for DeathSantis. He might try to order positive kids back into classrooms, no masks or distancing or anything.

  71. 71.

    trollhattan

    First the prison guards, then the cops, now the firefighters are yelling about a vaccine mandate. Have you asshats not been taking Covid sufferers to emergency for the last year and a half? Has it occurred to you, you might catch it from one of those folks? Anybody?

    One of the largest labor unions in the city of Sacramento has stated its opposition to a vaccination mandate of all city employees. Sacramento Area Firefighters Local 522 said in a letter to Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the City Council that it “adamantly supports our members having the ‘right to choose’ to be vaccinated or not.”

    Chris Andrew, the president of Local 522, did not stop there: “Doctors, nurses, firefighters, police officers, correctional officers and other essential workers have been on the front lines with COVID from the beginning,” Andrew wrote in a letter dated Wednesday.

    “All of these professionals have learned, through research and experience, the risks of COVID-19. We are very confident that our members have educated themselves in order to make the best decision for themselves and their families.”
    Read more here: https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/article253452159.html#storylink=cpy

    Future headline: “Firefighters Local 522 sues city over dangerous working conditions.

  72. 72.

    JPL

    @Betty Cracker: A few counties in GA have already closed their schools for cleaning.   One is doing virtual learning, and the other just closing for two weeks.   Cobb County is going to explode with the nasties screaming about their rights to kill kids, until one dies.

    The good news for GA is Kemp doesn’t have the power to prevent mask mandates.

  73. 73.

    Kayla Rudbek

     

     

    @JoyceH: OT: I recommended your books to one of my aunts today. Unfortunately she doesn’t have any e-readers or a smartphone, so I will have to send my other aunt who is more technically adept a link to your Amazon page. They’re sisters and they live in the same town and see each other several times a week.

  74. 74.

    sab

    @Kay: Catholic School parents coming in and rioting at public school board meetings. That is what it has been here. The family I am married into is Catholic and public school, and they are pissed. Interesting to watch.

  75. 75.

    trollhattan

    OTOH this seems positive.

    The Hill: “The United States on Friday reported almost a million new COVID-19 vaccinations from the previous day’s total, the biggest one-day tally for vaccinations since early July.”

    “The number includes 576,000 people getting their first dose of the vaccine.”

    We have cratered here in new doses from the peak last spring. Hoping the date for this week shows an upswing. School starts soon (some districts already in session).

  79. 79.

    japa21

    @sab: Been meaning to post this for a while and your comment made me think of this.
    Every week the pastor at the Catholic Church I attend sends out an email about various things and then also puts it in the church bulletin. Last week he was discussing things the Archdiocese of Chicago is doing (mandating masks for all employees and strongly recommending masks for anybody going into  facility) and he added this comment.

      regardless of vaccine status we are strongly encouraging everyone to wear masks when entering any part of our campus, particularly our church during Mass.  Let’s share the responsibility to protect the precious gift of life that God has given us—to YOU– and those whom you encounter.  It is the strongest way that we here at Holy Family can be Pro-Life.

    Bold mine.​

  82. 82.

    Another Scott

    @Barbara: +1

    They have always thought that they could just bluster their way through the pandemic, and, hey, if a few hundred thousand people die, well, people die every day. At least they showed the eggheads that they can keep the economy working for the MotUs. The important people got vaccinated, and that’s all that matters.

    :-/

    I suspect that, like everything else, there won’t be a time where everything suddenly changes and the FL GQP returns to sanity and DeSatan is soundly rejected. If it happens, it will be a gradual process with lots of hold-outs.

    It’s good that sensible people are doing what’s right in the face of his bluster and threats.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  83. 83.

    Roger Moore

    @trollhattan:

    I think a lot of unions are opposing vaccination mandates reflexively.  They are worried about allowing the employer to set new working conditions being some kind of precedent, even when those new working conditions are driven by outside events and are being done in the workers’ best interest.  It’s stupid- they should quietly negotiate some kind of COVID hazard pay or bonus sick time for people who need time to recover from their shots- but I can see where they’re coming from.

  84. 84.

    HeleninEire

    Yeah I told you that I would not STFU about this. I am 4 weeks away from my Ireland trip.

    Have to say if the southern states mess this up for me and the EU doesn’t let us in I will lose my mind.

    I just wanna see my friends.

  85. 85.

    topclimber

    @sab: Hopefully. Maybe if the deal includes that you have to be pandemic-compliant to claim the benefit?

    More generally, they could work as teacher aides or hospital aides for things that don’t require vast specialized skills.

    One problem with loan forgiveness now is that much of it is only for fully qualified teachers working in certain school districts.

    ETA: It wouldn’t have to be just college kids. Lots of older adults owe lots of student loans.

  86. 86.

    Nora Lenderbee

    Dear Writer: I don’t understand a word of this new feature description you’ve written, and I don’t think you do either. It’s better to say “I don’t get this” and ask for help than to pretend you understand and put down gibberish. You are very junior and this is tough material–no one expects you to understand everything, and you will not lose face if you ask for more explanation. So get over it already for God’s sake

  89. 89.

    debbie

    @Betty Cracker:

    a national media organization touting him as the great white GOP hope

    Honestly, I’m fine with this. He’s a dope and that’s all he’ll ever be. I can hear the debates already…

  90. 90.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    I got the “photograph of a vaccine card” on the cell phone this afternoon in the office. First time. Really young people always hand me their phone when I ask for a document :)

    I have mistakenly seen their other photographs when they do this- horrifying. I don’t want to know.

  92. 92.

    TS (the original)

    @New Deal democrat:

    The effect will be that the most current numbers will likely always artificially show a declining trend, only to be revised up days later

    Always leads back to – lies, damn lies and statistics.

  94. 94.

    trollhattan

    About those school mask and vaccine requirements.

    The UC Davis Medical Center reported Friday that its emergency room nearly set a new record in the first week of August for the number of COVID-19 patients.

    The UCD doctors noted in a news release issued Friday that, this time around, they are putting a much younger generation of Sacramentans on life support than they did earlier in the pandemic. Roughly three out of five people coming to the UC Davis emergency department are ages 39 or younger, according to UCD statistics.

    “The numbers are astonishing, and at the same time, we are seeing no decrease in the number of non-COVID ED visits,” said Dr. Nathan Kuppermann, professor and chair in the Department of Emergency Medicine. “This is leading to substantial crowding of the (emergency department), despite creating a special area for the care of patients with COVID.”

    The number of COVID-19 patients surged to 107 in the emergency department at UC Davis Medical Center during the first week of August, up 33 percent from the 80 patients seen the week before. Even more telling, the figure is just eight fewer than the weekly all-time high set during the week of Dec. 20, 2020, before vaccines were widely available.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article253477759.html#storylink=cpy

  95. 95.

    sab

    @debbie: Trump was a fucking moron. Stupider and more of an asshole than my cocker spaniel.

    ( Much more. The cocker is a pleasant little guy.)

  99. 99.

    Kent

    I really don’t see the logic behind what DeSantis is doing.   Checking the NYT Covid web sit right now…

    In Florida the voting age (18+ population is 72% vaccinated with at least one dose and 60% completely vaccinated.   So at BEST he is pandering to the 28% of the population that is not vaccinated.   However we also know that large numbers of these are Black and Hispanic folks who’s reasons for being vaccine hesitant are unlikely to be MAGA politics.

    That leaves maybe 10-15% of the voting age population that is white MAGA base and cheerleading all of this anti-vax stupidity.  How does that convert into a winning electoral majority?  Are all the old folks who have long since been vaccinated really going to be amused by all this anti-vax hysteria?  I doubt it.

    This makes zero sense at all in terms of Florida politics where DeSantis is only really going to be challenged in the general election.  It does, however perhaps make sense in the 2024 presidential primary context where he will be trying to appeal to the most narrow hard-core Trumpy GOP base.

    So I’m guessing that the uber pro-Covid governors are all angling for the 2024 GOP primary.  Nothing else makes sense.  DeSantis, Abbott, and Noem.

  101. 101.

    Kay

    @sab:

    I looked up my nieces and nephews. Mistake.

    I love how cranky judges are about the docs on phones. “It’s on your phone? What am I supposed to do with that?”  I warn them but they don’t listen.

  105. 105.

    Betsy

    @mrmoshpotato: Believe it or not, I actually saw a whole Twitter thread by some anti-vaxxer/anti-masker on how healthy it is to have unwashed hands. Hint: they build up a healthy community of protective bacteria.

    I guess  that’s why unwashed hands are so popular in restaurants and highly recommended in operating rooms nationwide.

  106. 106.

    West of the Rockies

    @Kent:

    Do you think the bland and unpleasant Abbott really thinks he has an iota of a chance to be president?

  107. 107.

    Skepticat

    @Ken: Will Florida be as sensible?

    You’re kidding, right? There’s an oxymoron in that sentence.

    I’m trying to encourage my nephew and his husband to move back to New England from Floriduh. His husband is a rock star in a big retail company headquartered there, but rather than lose him, the company actually is talking about opening a hub up north for him to run, which would be great. My nephew works online, so he’s flexible. I have many friends in Florida, and I worry about each and every one, though I believe they’re all sensibly vaxxed. But it’s as I say when people tell me to drive safely—it isn’t I that I worry about; it’s those other idiots out there. Damn DeinSanitis.

  108. 108.

    Dan B

    @rikyrah: Looks like he’d win Pumping Iron Chef as well.  He looks like whatever he goes for it gets 100%, or 200%.

     

    Assassin vibes or maybe Souffle Wrecker vibes?  He probably has to steer clear of the oven when there’s a souffle inside.

  112. 112.

    Ghost of Joe Liebling*s Dog

    @LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess) – Kate Wolf wrote it (and recorded it knowing she didn’t have much time left, I suspect), and Nanci Griffith covered it, and I never could decide which version I liked best of all.

    Too soon gone, both of them, and those words always read, to me, like a sad farewell.

  114. 114.

    LiminalOwl (formerly The Fat White Duchess)

    @sab: How awful for all concerned.  I’m so sorry you’re faced with this.

  115. 115.

    Matt McIrvin

    @New Deal democrat: Massachusetts has been reporting that way for ages. It makes more sense as an accurate indicator of trends–fewer weird artifacts from gaps in reporting–it’s just that you can never trust the slope of the curve for the last few days.

  116. 116.

    Geminid

    @Barbara:  While South Dakota is now a very red state as far as federal elections go. Kristi Noem won her last election by less than 5% of the vote. South Dakota is a small place politically, and Noem’s flying around in the state jet on national and personal business has not gone unnoticed. South Dakota voters may decide to cut their ambitious Governor down to size next November.

  117. 117.

    Bill Arnold

    @Geminid:

    While South Dakota is now a very red state as far as federal elections go. Kristi Noem won her last election by less than 5% of the vote.

    Interesting. Do you think the ingredients are available to cook up a campaign to damage her enough politically that she loses reelection?
    The knives are clearly out (or being sharpened) for DeSantis, and it is fun to watch.

  118. 118.

    TriassicSands

    @Betty Cracker:

    I’m in no way confident that this giant clusterfuck will prevent him from sailing to reelection in 2022

    Never underestimate the stupidity of the American people.

    Every day now, I ask myself, “How do people get this stupid?”

    I suspect that there is no answer, because the level of stupidity — on a life-and-death issue, is so profound.

  119. 119.

    FlyingToaster

    @wvng:

    Driving into Scranton yesterday, I saw a huge “Trump 2024” billboard by I-84. I expect DeSantis will be his running mate if he runs.

    Can’t be.  Top & second on the ticket have to be from different states.  Trump moved to Florida, so he’s not going to have DeathSantis.

    The GOP is going to be some lunatic ticket like DeSantis/Greene.  Or Cotton/Boebert.

  121. 121.

    Bishop Bag

    @FlyingToaster:
    Hey! Didn’t Dick Cheney get like a Post Office Box in Wyoming so that both he and Bush would not be residents of Texas? Trump will just change his mailing address to Bedminster (?) or something.

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