Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

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

I desperately hope that, yet again, i am wrong.

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

You cannot shame the shameless.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

The arc of the moral universe doesn’t bend itself. it’s up to us.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

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

Let’s bury these fuckers at the polls 2 years from now.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

If ‘weird’ was the finish line, they ran through the tape and kept running.

Let me file that under fuck it.

When they say they’re pro-life, they don’t mean yours.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Schadenfreude Open Thread: OSHA Is the New HIPAA

Schadenfreude Open Thread: OSHA Is the New HIPAA

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… A conjure word that, it is imagined, will immediately stun one’s many (perceived) enemies into submission!!!1!…


Homeschooled GOP show pony has BIG THOUGHT…

Reader Interactions

215Comments

  1. 1.

    Cermet

    Amazing that the stupid in this country has reach epidemic proportions – thanks to hate radio, fake (fox) news and its clones. I despair for this country and its democracy.

  2. 2.

    geg6

    Hahaha. These people are idiots. We have one unvaccinated person in our unit. Since vaccines became available we have gently encouraged her to get a jab. Slowly, it has become less gentle and more insistent. We are now openly making fun of and angrily denouncing vaccine skeptics (not her directly though). She still refuses because her husband “won’t let her.” I used to like her a lot. I don’t anymore. Fuckem. And fuck their feelings.

  3. 3.

    Nicole

    After reading an entry yesterday on the Herman Cain Award page on reddit, that of a grandmother who posted all kinds of unpleasant anti-vax nonsense on her social media, and then her likewise unvaccinated daughter and all three of her grandkids came down with Covid, with the 4-year-old dying (due to preexisting respiratory issues), I feel these people can fuck all the way off. Honestly, I’m at the point where I wouldn’t care if the National Guard was sent out to dart us all like elephants in the bush. Hell, then I wouldn’t have to make an appointment for my booster.

  6. 6.

    burnspbesq

    Le sigh. So many of our fellow Americans are too f***ing stupid to realize that they’re being lied to and exploited for power and profit by a small number of evil and cynical asshats.

  7. 7.

    randy khan

    @geg6:

    She still refuses because her husband “won’t let her.”

    I hope someone has pointed out that she’s not required to tell her husband.  (Not saying it will change her mind, but I think it’s consistent with the shift from gentle persuasion to mocking.)

  11. 11.

    kindness

    Sadly I have uber ‘liberal’ friends who repeat Republican framing because Democrats are just as bad as Republicans. Yea those same ‘liberals’ did vote for Jill Stein because Hillary was just as bad or worse than Trump. Some friends I can only tolerate if I keep putting them on 30 day Ignore on FB. I love them even though they are idiots.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    Rs will reach for any conceivable (or inconceivable) objection to anything Biden does or says. And political media will go ‘Hmm, you have a point there.’

  14. 14.

    sab

    @geg6: I hate to bothsides this, but in my misspent youth I was a divorce lawyer. Asshole husbands can be very very scary to live with, and harder to leave.

  17. 17.

    rikyrah

    Anything that the Government can use to get folks to do right and for us to be protected from the lying unvaccinated, is ok by me.
    THEY SHOULD BE MADE UNCOMFORTABLE.
    AND, THE WORKPLACE SHOULD BE SAFE.

    NO JAB. NO JOB.

    Plain and simple.
    And, employers who don’t want to comply, should put on their front doors

    UNVACCINATED WELCOME HERE.

    UH HUH
    UH HUH

  19. 19.

    Matt McIrvin

    Like I said, OSHA is an *old* conservative bugbear. Right-wingers want us to be more tolerant of workers falling into vats and getting their arms sawed off. Exposing them to diseases is not much different.

  20. 20.

    geg6

    @sab:

    I do not believe that is the problem.  I believe she agrees with her husband and is using this as an excuse.  The husband excuse is fairly recent, mainly since we have started to become more insistent.  Before that, it was that the vaccines weren’t tested enough.  Fuck her.

  22. 22.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Philip Klein
    @philipaklein
    I’m not sure if Biden understands what he has just unleashed.

    I’m not sure if Philip Klein understands what a smug, arrogant, patronising, condescending asshole he sounds like.

  23. 23.

    Immanentize

    My hot take?

    Biden just won on vaccines. Everyone pretty much believes that they are now required in all work places. Most people are NOT sweating the details of administrative powers or enforcement capabilities. What people heard — and the right is exaggerating beyond the actual — is that if you don’t get the jab, you will lose your job. Maybe not today, but soon.

    And companies will be reinforcing that understanding by rolling out their own mandates because “the government made them”

    Sure, there will be noisy hold outs which the media will dutifully report as if it is a huge movement. But it is now pretty much over as the ICUs remain capped out. And people want their kids back in school whatever it takes.

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @rikyrah:

    NO JAB. NO JOB.

    This is excellent!

    Nominated for rotating tag, bumper sticker, t-shirt, mug, tote bag, protest sign, skywriting, cable news chyron … oh, and of course, workplace policy everywhere.

    You’ve outdone yourself, rikyrah!

  25. 25.

    lowtechcyclist

    honestly very funny watching conservatives assume the vaccine mandate is some kind of ad hoc bullshit that Biden just impulsively put out there because after Trump they assume government is doing illegal shit to make people mad

    This.  I’m old enough to be on Medicare, and aside from the TFG years, Biden’s been in government since I was 18, as Senator, VP, and now President.  He knows his way around, and I’m sure he has a very detailed understanding of what a President can and can’t do, and how the President can do things.

    Using OSHA was fucking brilliant.  I’d have never thought of that.  He may not have either. But he hired good people too, and if he didn’t think of it himself, obviously one of them did.

  26. 26.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I missed the AM thread so I’m gonna drop this here:

    This is a story about a curious boy with no name — at least, no name that I ever came to know. It was 2013, more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks. I was a Marine then, back in Afghanistan for a second time.

    At the time, I was working to stop a Taliban cell that specialized in making improvised explosive devices. In that effort, a video emerged. I watched it.

    I remember him. I cannot forget him. I remember watching a minute-long video showing a static video camera aimed down a narrow path between two mud hut walls, common in the small hamlets often surrounded by opium-poppy fields. On the screen, not much was moving.

    I remember the wind from the east kicking up the moon-like dust to the west. The tree and its shadow moved across the ground as the branches and leaves broke up the rays of sunlight to make abstract art patterns on the desert floor.

    I remember the boy, full of energy and life, running into the frame and then out of it. From left to right.

    With little boys like him — with little boys like mine — the curiosities of life can be palpable. And so the curious boy with no name wandered slowly back into the frame. From right to left.

    He is an Afghan and, given the province we’re in — Helmand, to be exact — he maybe speaks Pashto. His small size places him somewhere between 3 and 5 years old. Maybe he’s 6, a feat in itself; it’s said one in 10 children in Afghanistan die before they turn 5.

    As his curiosity runs rampant, I know what he does not. When he ran into the frame and then out of it, he had stepped on a soft spot in the ground — a patch different from the rest of the hard-packed dirt. He wanted to know why. I did not.

    More at the link. It ends as you expect but it is no less heartbreaking for it.

  27. 27.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Immanentize: A lot of what’s going on here is the government giving large employers cover to do what most of them probably wanted to do anyway. “Don’t blame us, it’s government regulations.”

    There might be exceptions like, say, Hobby Lobby. But the fact that Fox News already has a mandate is telling.

  29. 29.

    Immanentize

    @OzarkHillbilly: OH! HOW GOES? I am not at all worried about your recovery. No not at all…

    Meanwhile, Taliban? In 2013? Making “making bomb” videos? That they kill a kid in? Hmmm, I smell very convenient fiction.

  30. 30.

    lowtechcyclist

    Philip Klein
    @philipaklein
    I’m not sure if Biden understands what he has just unleashed.

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’m not sure if Philip Klein understands what a smug, arrogant, patronising, condescending asshole he sounds like.

    Not only that, but it’s Klein who has no idea what Biden has unleashed.  He’s unleashed us.  We were already unbelievably pissed off at the Covidiots, but now we’ve got Biden’s wind at our backs, and we’re not gonna take any shit from those worthless bozos.

    Winning sure feels good.  And at least right now, it’s extremely energizing.  When the RWNJs whine, we’ll just laugh in their faces.

  31. 31.

    rikyrah

    @lowtechcyclist:

     

    This.  I’m old enough to be on Medicare, and aside from the TFG years, Biden’s been in government since I was 18, as Senator, VP, and now President.  He knows his way around, and I’m sure he has a very detailed understanding of what a President can and can’t do, and how the President can do things.

    Using OSHA was fucking brilliant.  I’d have never thought of that.  He may not have either. But he hired good people too, and if he didn’t think of it himself, obviously one of them did.

    I love all this. I do believe that 46 is the man for this moment. And, his extensive experience in government is being used to benefit the country as a whole.

  32. 32.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: The antivaxxers/antimaskers don’t understand what they unleashed.

    The dynamic in this country for the past 40 years or so has been that liberals and moderates are constantly afraid of conservatives getting angry, but conservatives aren’t afraid of anyone else getting angry, except maybe for people further to the right than themselves.

    This is an abusive relationship.

    We’ve had enough.

  33. 33.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin:

    There might be exceptions like, say, Hobby Lobby

    Mrs. SFAW and I were shopping somewhere, and she saw a Hobby Lobby. She made some comment like “you want to go in there while I’m shopping at the other stores?” I said “Fuck them” before I realized she was yanking my chain.

    But still: Fuck ’em

  34. 34.

    Barbara

    I work in a related backwater to OSHA regulation and most people scatter and run if they are asked to actually get down in the weeds to understand how It All Fits Together. So it is with something like extreme disgust that I find myself reading idiots who have NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT THEY ARE TALKING ABOUT. It’s a boring bunch like me who have ANY IDEA what OSHA or Medicare or whatever can actually do and WHY they are DIFFERENT from, say, Trump trying to keep “sanctuary cities” from receiving federal transportation funds. Which is what someone posited on a Reddit thread my daughter read to suggest that Biden doesn’t have the authority to do what he did. OMFG. Really? You think these two things are the same?

  35. 35.

    rikyrah

    @lowtechcyclist:

    Not only that, but it’s Klein who has no idea what Biden has unleashed.  He’s unleashed us.  We were already unbelievably pissed off at the Covidiots, but now we’ve got Biden’s wind at our backs, and we’re not gonna take any shit from those worthless bozos.

     

    THIS THIS THIS

    Those of us who did the right thing.

    We are PHUCKING PISSED.

    Because the lying unvaccinated, not only endanger themselves..

    but, them 6-8 OTHER PEOPLE THAT THEY CAN INFECT.

    THIS is what WE – THE VACCINATED are NOT MOVING PAST.

    Your FREEDOMS END WHEN THEY ENDANGER THE LIVES OF OTHERS.

  36. 36.

    dmsilev

    “Appeal to 75 percent of adults and piss off some of the remainder, though the latter is already perpetually pissed as their natural state of mind” seems like a reasonable political move. It also happens to be, you know, the right thing to do for fighting this pandemic.

  37. 37.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Peale:

    I’m about to turn the TV off, but I’ve had MSNBC on in the background most of the morning, and they are milking 9/11 for every tear duct they can find.

    No personal account is told without a catch in the voice and a muffled sob. It is never “that day,” it is always “that fateful day.” It is never “the attack,” it is always “the horrific attack.”

    I believe there’s value in ritual and mindful commemoration, but this ain’t it.

    Click.

  38. 38.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SiubhanDuinne: We are losing a 9/11’s worth of people every two days to COVID-19, right now, and the fuckers who make the biggest deal of 9/11 at all times have made a political virtue of not caring, and opposing all preventative measures. I don’t want to hear it.

  40. 40.

    piratedan

    @burnspbesq: they are, but who is telling them that this is the case?  Facebook? CNN? have any of the Conservative Media Network triumvirate come clean… ummm, no.  Their elected politicians? The FNYT? hardly..

    they get to populate that bubble because apparently to the non-partisan media that bubble also serves them too… somehow.

  41. 41.

    geg6

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I will, however, give kudos to the Memory Box film they showed Wednesday (and are apparently re-broadcasting over the weekend).  It was moving, serious and weirdly hopeful and I recommend watching it if you can stand it.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    “Unleashed”. They’ve been screaming incoherently for years. They were screaming when Trump was President because they weren’t getting exactly what they wanted. The pro-racism marches, vehicular homicide and various other terrorist attacks were when Trump was in office. When were they “leashed”?

    How has coddling them worked so far?  They’ll do worse things than threaten school board members as a result of a vaccine mandate?  Is the threat that they’ll blow up a building? These warnings by “mainstream” people need to be specific. We’re in for even worse behavior? Worse than an attack on the capital? So we all need to fear and obey them or we’ll be punished?

  44. 44.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @geg6:

    I watched the first half hour or so last night and thought it was really well done. Yes, I do plan to watch it all this weekend.

  45. 45.

    geg6

    @Kay:

    Yes, that is exactly their calculation.  They have underestimated the anger people like me feel because we aren’t constantly shrieking in their faces.  Well, that is over.  I’m not shutting up.

  46. 46.

    germy

    OH Sen candidate Josh Mandel in a cornfield, “I am hoping and praying that the SCt justices .. will do the right thing, and stand up for our liberty. And if they don’t, I call on my fellow Americans, do not comply. And when the Gestapo show up at your door, you know what to do.” pic.twitter.com/Q0JcYIZsr1— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 10, 2021

    I was told if you don't comply with law enforcement you should get shot https://t.co/LmeLaPMO0z— Elizabeth Picciuto (@epicciuto) September 10, 2021

  48. 48.

    Immanentize

    And so the Biden move has its first positive international effect: France is now requiring Americans to have vaccinations to travel to the country. (Conveniently announced after tourist season.) Expect more like this.

  49. 49.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Gabby Giffords, a US Congress person, was shot in the head in 2011.

    I don’t know how much more they can be “unleashed.” Although I agree with the analogy that they are irrational animals.

  50. 50.

    brendancalling

    I would gladly load Ryan Grim (and his pal Glum Greenwart) into a rocket aimed at the sun.

    I’d also love to see Josh Mandel show the courage of his convictions and assault/threaten a cop, or point a gun at one. As they say in Philly, “fuck around and find out.”

  51. 51.

    germy

    tune in to fox news tonight if you want to watch a bunch of vaccinated people who work at a place w vaccination requirements pretend they're unvaccinated and dont work at a place with vaccine requirements

    — Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) September 9, 2021

  52. 52.

    brendancalling

    @SiubhanDuinne: I’m going camping at an old time festival in upstate NY this weekend. I don’t expect to hear a single blessed word about 9/11, and happy to miss it.

    That said, my current ladyfriend worked at the WTC and was there during the attack, so she’s got stronger feelings than me. I have no interest in the media circus that still surrounds a very sad day.

  53. 53.

    Baud

    We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in hospitals, we shall fight on ventilators and ICU beds, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in ivermectin, we shall defend our Freedom, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight in the school boards, we shall fight on the Facebook, we shall fight on the Twitter and in the megachurches, we shall fight in the NYT op/ed pages; we shall never surrender.

  54. 54.

    Baud

    @brendancalling: I’m probably going to watch very little.  However, in my mind, three things make this different: (1) Biden as consoler in chief, (2) 20 years is a milestone given how people respond to even numbered anniversaries; (3) we’re out of Afghanistan, which obviously grew out of 9/11.

  55. 55.

    germy

    How will new vaccine mandates go over? Washington Post-ABC poll conducted last week found that many unvaccinated Americans say they’ll try to get exemption or quit if their employer imposes a vaccination mandate. (H/t @sfcpoll @EmGusk) pic.twitter.com/kAkwA5kC2r— Dan Diamond (@ddiamond) September 9, 2021

    Maine instituted a vaccine mandate for healthcare workers last month and there have been non-stop protests since then. But so far, only 20 staff, out of more than 10,000, have actually left their jobs. They just end up getting vaccinated instead. https://t.co/HdjwDDIQqb— Nathan Bernard (@nathanTbernard) September 10, 2021

  58. 58.

    brendancalling

    @Nicole: “then her likewise unvaccinated daughter and all three of her grandkids came down with Covid, with the 4-year-old dying (due to preexisting respiratory issues).”

    I’m also on the HCA awards. It’s stories like this that do me in. Some poor fucking kid DIED, and Grandma won’t take ANY responsibility. “It wasn’t ME what done it, it was GOD’S WILL that the child died. PRAYER WARRIORS ASSEMBLE, let’s welcome little Sally home by FLOODING HEAVEN WITH PRAYERS.”

    I AM SO GODDAMNED SICK OF THESE MORONS.

  59. 59.

    Matt McIrvin

    @germy: This kind of thing is the conservative “I’m moving to Canada”–many more people make noises about doing it than actually will.

  60. 60.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    Yes, our efforts to mollify them were really going great:

    WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (WPEC) — Police arrested a maskless man at a special school board meeting in Palm Beach County, Fla. Wednesday afternoon. The man refused to take his seat in a room reserved for maskless individuals after several warnings.

    It’s fine. Just give up on sending your kid to school. In fact, give them the school. Then they’ll be happy.

  62. 62.

    sab

    @Baud: Several of my big dogs died this last couple of years, so I have lots of left over Heartguard ( ivermectin) . Would it be wrong to sell it to people?

  64. 64.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: I really am curious about one thing — do these guys (mostly) believe that the police are so in the bag that they can now do whatever they want? They sure cry like babies when they get arrested.

    ETA my number one source for this question is misbehaving jerks on planes. They all seem unhinged. Then when the police show up, the negotiating begins and the worry creeps on. You can see it on the videos.

  65. 65.

    brendancalling

    @Baud: I can dig it.

    At the time I was in NYC every weekend, working with a band that somehow managed to tour in Europe that summer. Friends of mine lost friends, we were worried for a weekend that our drummer (who worked at the WTC) was dead in the rubble (he wasn’t), “have you seen me” posters were everywhere, and I will never forget that smell.

    (No) thanks for the memory….

  68. 68.

    Matt McIrvin

    The other thing about employer behavior is that, remember, in several states they were FORBIDDEN BY LAW from having vaccine mandates or even asking people about vaccination status before this point. Presumably this new OSHA reg overrides that unless Kemp or whoever can make it into a federalism issue in the courts. But it’s difficult for them to argue that Biden is putting an intolerable burden on businesses when the state was actually requiring them to tolerate pandemic disease in their workforce before.

    It does occur to me that this probably puts those states in a weird position in which businesses with 100 or more employees are required to have vaccine mandates, and business under 100 employees are legally required NOT to have vaccine mandates. It’ll lead to some weird scrambling when the threshold is passed in either direction. Suppose one person quits to put them at 99 and then they hire somebody else the next day–are they required to destroy all the data and then collect it again?

  70. 70.

    randy khan

    @germy:

    Yeah, the reality is that the poll responses are entirely performative. Given the choice between enduring a jab and losing a job, nearly everyone will take the jab.

    I’d also mention that, if I understand how unemployment compensation works, people who are fired because they refuse to meet job requirement are ineligible to get a check.

  75. 75.

    randy khan

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It does occur to me that this probably puts those states in a weird position in which businesses with 100 or more employees are required to have vaccine mandates, and business under 100 employees are legally required NOT to have vaccine mandates. It’ll lead to some weird scrambling when the threshold is passed in either direction.

    I’m wondering if there’s something in the regulations about companies with fewer than 100 employees, e.g., that voluntary compliance with the rule is permitted or even a more direct rejection of the state anti-vaxx rules.

  76. 76.

    Kay

    @Immanentize:

    I think it’s sad when low status wingers do it. You know this scenario- they are criminals who live in a crime house and they call the police. I make them say it. I ask “who called the police?” It’s always them. “I called because asshole keyed my car”. And then got picked up on your warrant? Is that how that went?

  77. 77.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    LOL. Peak sighthound was some years ago when Bro’ Man and previous partner had a greyhound, an Italian greyhound and a big shar-pei. (“I am too a sighthound! I’ve got big bones.”)

  78. 78.

    Cacti

    I saw that Jake Tapper was tut-tutting Biden about scolding not being the right approach with anti-vax losers.

    Fuck the beltway Republican courtier press with a thousand hypodermic needles to the sphincter.

  79. 79.

    sab

    @geg6: Well, in that case, yes indeed fuck her.

    We are having marital issues on the home front because with seven year old grandchild back in meatspace school and her having Covid positive half-sisters, and spouse and I being over 65 with other health issues, I really want to go back to them wearing masks when they are in our house. But husband, an otherwise reasonable person, is not willing to risk antagonizing them. Their risk perception is different from mine. He mostly agrees with me on the risk, but he wants this to be over. So here we are.

  81. 81.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: Years ago my company’s office manager had an Italian greyhound that would climb stairs using only front legs. She would tuck her back legs up under her abdomen.  Too many legs to keep track of on stairs. She got to be on David Letterman as a stupid dog trickster.

  82. 82.

    Amir Khalid

    @sab:
    Sorry for your loss. I suppose selling the Ivermectin on is fine if it’s going to be given to dogs. But if your buyers want it for their own human selves, that would be abetting their stupidity, and the best way to ease your conscience is to charge them double.

  83. 83.

    Immanentize

    @Kay: Low status wingers are the looting soldiers of Shakespeare. They are the troops necessary for the 100 years war, but in the end are killed like Pistol and Nym or executed for robbing a church like Bardolph.

    It is sad — why can’t these guys see their own exposures? Your example is a perfect one. Necessary to the fight, but utterly expendable. While the RWNJ leaders are all vaxxed and have access to every type of health care and undoubtedly snigger at the rubes over cocktails.

  86. 86.

    Immanentize

    @sab: I now think you have been way too nice to your spouse all these years. Is he not more afraid of you and the thousands of ways you can make him suffer daily as opposed to the relative mild concerns relating to irritating the kids??

  88. 88.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    This seems… notable

    Kyle Griffin @kylegriffin1
    Former California Sen. Barbara Boxer strongly suggests to Sen. Dianne Feinstein that she should retire.

    Asked about her former colleague, Boxer said: “If Sen. Feinstein were to call me today and asked my advice, I would say only you can decide this. But from my perspective, I want you to know I’ve had very productive years away from the Senate doing good things. So put that into the equation.”

  90. 90.

    sab

    @Immanentize: About my only weapon is to stop cooking.

    One of the kids is very excitable. She spent most of her childhood (4 to 10) in bad foster care, so every disagreement becomes a loyalty test. She trusts him but no one else.

    ETA He is viewing the relationship risk differently than me, and I trust his judgment more than mine on this. Last year the choice was death v antagonize. This year it is breakthrough v antagonize. Different balance, so he wins this round.

  91. 91.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @burnspbesq:

    Some lady who told me she couldn’t stand Biden wouldn’t believe me when I told her that Trump made the Afghan government release 5000 Taliban fighters as apart of his “peace deal”.

    “That never happened”.

    Kept insisting that Biden could’ve done something to have changed the outcome just because he’s the President, wouldn’t place any blame on Trump. Unbelievable.

  92. 92.

    Steeplejack

    @sab:

    As I’m sure you know, typically you get greyhounds at about age 2, after they come off the track. They are great dogs, but it is surprising—and sad—how little they are “socialized.” The last one, Kitty (get it? no one ever got it—a dog named Kitty), spent her first three weeks of adoption basically camped out on the big landing between the two floors, because she just could not cope with stairs, and for some reason she felt safe in that space. (They put a dog bed there and put her in her crate at night.) She also had a bit of a problem adapting to “people are nice to me” and “life is good now.” Ugh. But she adapted! She became yet another “teacup greyhound”—among the world’s biggest lapdogs.

    What got Kitty over the hump was a 20-something niece who was in residence at Sighthound Hall for a few months while she did research at the Folger Library. She worked with Kitty a lot, got her going up and down the stairs and gave her a lot of love.

  94. 94.

    Roger Moore

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    I’m not sure if Philip Klein understands what a smug, arrogant, patronising, condescending asshole he sounds like.

    Yeah, I don’t think the anti-vaxers really appreciate what they’ve unleashed.  They think they can keep pissing off the libs endlessly with no negative consequences, but they’ve gone way past our willingness to tolerate their stupidity.  We’re actually doing something about it, and they just don’t know how to deal with that.

  97. 97.

    Steeplejack

    @geg6:

    “The vaccines weren’t tested enough.”

    LOL. Somebody—@Zeddary or @RSchooley, I think—had a great tweet about this: “How does an ‘experimental drug’ become just a drug? When 5 billion doses are given with almost no problems!”

  98. 98.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Baud:

    I suppose I meant it in the sense of it being exasperating. People like her don’t live in the real world and when you try to challenge them you get nowhere. The flat denial of something that is verifiable fact is what gets me. One of these times, anybody says “fake news”, I’m going to reply, “why, because you don’t want to believe it?”

    Another time, some middle aged woman made a quip about how some joke tweet she saw, how the poster would rather have “mean tweets” than high gas prices.

    I told her that the President has little control over what gas prices are. She replied, in the slightly confused way of someone who 1. is low-info, and 2. wasn’t expecting pushback, that it was the “pipeline”, which I can only assume refers to the XL pipeline. Or maybe the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack. Now, I have no idea if that would affect gas prices or not, but I kinda doubt it. Or at least be the whole explanation

    What I should’ve said was that Trump tear gassed peaceful protesters in DC so he could have a photo op and was an authoritarian monster

  99. 99.

    cain

    @randy khan: I hope someone has pointed out that she’s not required to tell her husband. (Not saying it will change her mind, but I think it’s consistent with the shift from gentle persuasion to mocking.)

    Fucking toxic males. She should totally tell him to fuck off and get the vaccination.

    ETA: I don’t know what I did to deserve this – but #100. ?

  100. 100.

    Roger Moore

    @Baud: ​
     

    Methinks the polls are skewed.

    It’s not that the polls are skewed, per se, but that people aren’t being honest with the pollster or themselves. Those people are making a threat they hope never to have to follow through on. It’s easy to say “I’ll quit rather than do X” but quite another to actually quit when asked to do X. They’re hoping that the threat will be enough to keep their employer from trying to impose a mandate, but the vast majority will cave when they realize their employer isn’t buying it.

  101. 101.

    Mathguy

    Since this is about vaccines, my school required vaccines of all students. The administration followed through and yesterday kicked out the very small number of students that refused. Good riddance, since i’m guessing that they are budding wingnuts or their parents are wingnuts.

  104. 104.

    Ken

    @Roger Moore: It’s easy to say “I’ll quit rather than do X” but quite another to actually quit when asked to do X.

    Reminds me of when I was teaching confirmation class. In the abstract, the 14-year-olds were fully behind witnessing for your faith. But when I asked if any of them would be willing to go to the train station and ask commuters if they’d like to attend our church….

  106. 106.

    scav

    @brendancalling: Said Gramma must take pride and comfort in knowing that her Lord and Savior, upon learning that a vulnerable innocent baby was under her grandmotherly care, said Nuh-uh and removed that baby to a better place.

  107. 107.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Steeplejack: They can always insist that some horrible delayed effect is just about to kick in, with a time horizon slightly longer than the longest period for which someone has already been vaccinated. That’s the point at which I start arguing about mechanisms–particularly for the mRNA vaccines, where there’s just no trace of the original vaccine in the person any more. And the fact that COVID is known to have terrible long-term effects for some people, whereas they’re imagining something that has never happened with a vaccine–a long-term effect suddenly popping up when there were no detectable shorter-term effects.

  108. 108.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I mean, the XL pipeline wouldn’t affect gas prices significantly and wouldn’t provide many jobs. This was shown over and over again.

    The cyberattack had a temporary effect on gas prices that went away. It has nothing to do with current gas prices, which are entirely a result of increased demand as the economy and travel heat up. Would’ve hit with Trump or Biden.

  111. 111.

    Roger Moore

    @Immanentize: ​
     

    It is sad — why can’t these guys see their own exposures?

    Because the whole right-wing con is based around fake group membership. They have been told for decades that they’re all part of the group, and they’ve completely bought into it. Once that happens, they’re willing to go along with just about anything the group pushes. They honestly think they’ll get the same treatment the guys at the top do because they’re all part of the group.

  112. 112.

    zhena gogolia

    I’ve been teaching in person (masked) this week. We have 95% vaccination. Hoping for the best. I really don’t want to go back to Zoom. Luckily the “Fog Stopper” worked on my glasses.

  114. 114.

    Ken

    @MisterForkbeard: current gas prices, which are entirely a result of increased demand as the economy and travel heat up. Would’ve hit with Trump or Biden.

    I’m not so sure the economy would have heated up with TFG in charge. Certainly no stimulus or COVID relief package, or more generally all the good things that have been done. We might even have a nationwide ban on vaccine mandates.

  115. 115.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): That’s how it goes. Trump released 5000 Taliban fighters. He agreed to give up Bagram and cut the Afghan Government out of the evacuation agreement. He released their Taliban leaders from prison as part of the agreement to leave, and promised not to attack the Taliban as long as they didn’t attack us directly.

    These ALL happened. Trump announced it when he did it. And they (and to a lesser extent the media) just don’t want to acknowledge it at all. Just straight refusal because they don’t wanna.

  116. 116.

    Roger Moore

    @Matt McIrvin:

    You just have to recognize that their resistance to the vaccine isn’t rational.  All the arguments they’re presenting are rationalizations for a decision they’ve made for reasons they’re unwilling to acknowledge, maybe even to themselves.

  117. 117.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Ken: Well, that’s true. The choice is basically “The economy sucks and lower (but not low) gas price, or the economy is doing a lot better and gas prices go up”.

    Overall gas prices would’ve gone up anyway, because the world demand for gas went up.

  118. 118.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Baud: It’s like this site’s few Internet tough guys/mountain men who talk about fighting in the streets.  We aren’t there yet and no one knows what they will really do until we are.

  119. 119.

    dmsilev

    @Mathguy: We’re threatening to do that. Classes don’t begin here for another couple of weeks, so there’s still some time, but the stated policy is “Students must be vaccinated. Medical exemptions will be granted, but that’s it.”. Pretty much the same for employees.

    Instruction this fall will mostly be in-person except for a few of the biggest lectures where we don’t have spaces large enough to accommodate the enrollment with sufficiently good ventilation; those will continue to be remote. N95 masks are mandatory for students in lectures/labs/etc., strongly recommended (though not strictly speaking mandated) for instructors.

  120. 120.

    JML

    Joe Biden made a great pick for his CoS. It’s still probably the single most important position in the government and has more impact on a president’s ability to get things done on a regular basis, both big and small than any other job. Ron Klain is someone who really knows what he is doing and clearly has the truth and faith of the president.

  123. 123.

    The Pale Scot

    @SiubhanDuinne:

    Public TV here in Nj is doing 10-15 minutes a day all week. Little coverage of the Saud family’s involvement or the EM worker’s battles with illnesses.

     

    Fuk ’em

  124. 124.

    Miss Bianca

    @Steeplejack:

    (get it? no one ever got it—a dog named Kitty)

    Hey, one of my friends gets it! Her latest book, The Second Mrs Astor (which is great, btw), prominently features a dog named Kitty – an Airedale Terrier owned by John Jacob Astor.

  125. 125.

    Kent

    Rachel Maddow had a brilliant segment on this topic last night.  She went into the history of Medicare rollout in the south in 1966, a history of which I was completely unaware.  Apparently in early 1966 there were over 2000 hospitals across the south that were still whites only, or segregated in some fashion.  Under the new Medicare law they were required to be completely desegregated in order to qualify for any Medicare dollars.  There was incredible wailing and nashing of teeth by hospital administrators across the south that spring who claimed there was no way they could possibly implement desegregation so rapidly because their clients simply would not stand for it.  But the Johnson Administration just stood fast, and by July when the new law kicked in, there was not one single hospital in the south that remained segregated.

    This is so very much the same as that except much much easier and simpler.  Virtually everyone who is affected is going to cave and get vaccinated.  And the few revanchist MAGATs who decide to get their asses fired on some principal of conscience objection or whatever?  Good fucking riddance. They were no doubt toxic to be around anyway.

  127. 127.

    Jeffro

    @Matt McIrvin:The dynamic in this country for the past 40 years or so has been that liberals and moderates are constantly afraid of conservatives getting angry, but conservatives aren’t afraid of anyone else getting angry, except maybe for people further to the right than themselves.

    Exactly right.

    Conservatives aren’t the only folks who get mad.  Liberals have other ‘tools in the toolbox’ but yeah, we get mad too.

  128. 128.

    Kent

    Regarding Medical exemptions.  My wife is a physician and she says there are only three medical exemptions that they are granting to their employees in her very large HMO chain.

    1.  Employees who had a SEVERE documented anaphylactic reaction to the first shot of the vaccine.
    2. Employees who have had a SEVERE documented anaphylactic reaction in the past to one of the components of the vaccine.
    3. Employees have had a SEVERE documented anaphylactic reaction to a similar vaccine in the past.

    That is it.  There are no other reasons for medical exemptions.  And all medical exemptions are reviewed by a review board of physicians.  No single physician can grant one on their own.

  129. 129.

    Jeffro

    @Kay:They’ll do worse things than threaten school board members as a result of a vaccine mandate?  Is the threat that they’ll blow up a building? These warnings by “mainstream” people need to be specific. We’re in for even worse behavior? Worse than an attack on the capital?

    The short version of this is going to be my response to conservatives’ bleating for, oh, the next decade or so: “You’re mad about X?  What are you going to do, storm the Capitol and beat on cops?”

  131. 131.

    Ksmiami

    @Kay: the only thing they deserve is a permanent cell in Guantanamo and their assets seized for incitement and violent threats.

  132. 132.

    Kent

    @Jeffro: The performative school board bullshit, at least that which is happening around here, is largely not local parents.  It is performative crisis actors who are frankly no fucking different than that Proud Boys and ANTIFA fucks who show up at BLM protests just because that is where the action is and they want to stir shit up.

    We just had a mask protest outside a school here in Vancouver that drew a bunch of proud boy fucks who has nothing to do with the school.  Some MAGAt parent was trying to get her HS daughter allowed to attend classes without a mask because she had a “disability” and the district was discriminating against her by not giving her a 504 plan that allowed her to go maskless for something to do with her “anxiety”.  All utter bullshit, but the proud boys tried to crash the school gates and “escort” this girl into school maskless.  Dipshits.  They did get a judge to ban protests within one mile of any district school.  So even the judges are running out of fucks to give. The one mile limit even opened my eyes.  I would have figured maybe a couple hundred yards or something.  There are so many school scattered about the region that I think people will have to look hard to find any populated space that isn’t within 1 mile of at least one school.

  135. 135.

    burnspbesq

    @randy khan:

    I’m wondering if there’s something in the regulations about companies with fewer than 100 employees, e.g., that voluntary compliance with the rule is permitted or even a more direct rejection of the state anti-vaxx rules.

    If that turns out to be a problem, I imagine that OSHA will modify the rule. The Constitutional authority for OSHA is the Commerce Clause, and as the case law currently stands it’s really hard to find any economic activity that doesn’t affect interstate commerce. See Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111 (1942).

  136. 136.

    JPL

    Grand imp is coming over for a sleepover. I went out to mow, and there is a new hole in the backyard. Since I don’t know who made the hole, I poured down boiling water. I have fire ant killer, so filled the hole with that, and plan on repeating with boiling water in a hour or so. Should that take care of what it was that dug the hole? GA has ground bees, snakes and moles and such. Definitely not ground bees, because I did poke around just in case. Definitely not fire ants, but I didn’t have anything else to dump down

  137. 137.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Steeplejack: I’ll be watching the French adaptations of Agatha Christie on Prime.  Stylish period pieces set in northern France in the late ‘50s/early ‘60s.  Suave detective, plucky red-headed girl reporter, and Monroe-esque secretary.   The French do Christie – what more can you want?

  138. 138.

    JPL

    @Kent: When a group protested at the Fulton County School Board meeting, the local news didn’t bother to ask if he they currently had students in the school system.   I recognized one person, that definitely doesn’t.

  139. 139.

    sab

    @Steeplejack: I remember moving my large German Shepherd from a one storey house in Nevada to a three storey house in Ohio. She had never seen stairs before. It took her a while to adjust.

  142. 142.

    Steeplejack

    @Miss Bianca:

    LOL. And my brother’s “Kitty” was always thought to reference “Oh, Kathleen,” said in the voice of Kathy Griffin’s mother (if you know her stand-up comedy).

  144. 144.

    rikyrah

    @Immanentize:

     

    And so the Biden move has its first positive international effect: France is now requiring Americans to have vaccinations to travel to the country. (Conveniently announced after tourist season.) Expect more like this

     

    CLAP CLAP CLAP

    Protect yourself world. Demand vaccinations from the USA travelers

  146. 146.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @burnspbesq: Le sigh. So many of our fellow Americans are too f***ing stupid to realize that they’re being lied to and exploited for power and profit by a small number of evil and cynical asshats.​

    “Le sigh” back atcha. They’re not nearly as stupid as you want to believe. In fact they are rather clever in navigating obstacles and manipulating conditions that are within their grasp.

    Many of them know, from their own (or their parents’ or grandparents’) experiences, that things for them & their sort were a lot better 50-60 years ago. They want to know why they aren’t any more. They want a narrative – and they get one from the Far Wrong that “explains” how the good things they would have had have been taken away by them eeeebil LIEbruls and given to The Others – humans who don’t look like them, speak like them, love like them, and/or worship like them – in return for their votes come election time.

    Look, ever since Michelson-Morley experiment – hell, go back to Darwin! – that which is demonstrably true has been diverging more and more from that which the average person’s “common sense” tells him/her ought to be true. We’ve come to where no one has an intuitive grasp of the way the world actually works, because the determining factors lie in the realms of the very small, the very large, the very strong and the very fast, and direct human experience – “common sense” – is divorced from those factors by many orders of magnitude.

    Most people, once their basic needs are met, want two things: significance (i.e., mattering to something or someone who matters to them) and agency (the ability to act upon and affect the conditions of their existence). The Far Wrong has done a bangup job of convincing too many of our more baffled countrymen that the reason they (feel as if) they no longer have either is that the DEMONrats have taken both away from them and given them away.

    IMO we need a counter-narrative – not just facts and figures and blather about the Constitution that they’ll walk right away from – and we needed it yesterday last year a couple of generations ago. Might as well start now & hope it’s not too late.

  148. 148.

    E.

    Our friend Marjorie TG has a great post up today on her Facebook page. It’s far too long to read and far too irrational to comprehend but it doesn’t take long to get the gist. Gist No. 1: She’s out of her fucking mind. Gist No. 2: She’s going after other R’s and inviting everyone to join her. She even acknowledges that she is breaking Reagan’s commandment, but since we won’t have a democracy any more in 2022 if Joe Biden stays the President, she feels she has no choice.

  149. 149.

    JPL

    @E.:  She has one of the safest seats in GA thanks to the decisions of the local republicans.    I hope she attacks the GA Republicans.

  154. 154.

    Soprano2

    @MisterForkbeard: He released their Taliban leaders from prison as part of the agreement to leave, and promised not to attack the Taliban as long as they didn’t attack us directly.

    The latest thing I saw going around RWNJ land is that 4 of the Taliban leaders were released by Obama in exchange for Bowie Bergdahl, which does happen to be true. They think that lets them get out of the horrible deal Trump made and blame it all on Obama somehow. LOL

    There’s a billboard that went up on one of our main drags shortly after Biden became president asking if Biden voters were happy with higher gas prices. I had a co-worker complaining that she bought a great big SUV last fall, and now the gas is higher it costs her so much more to drive to work, and in her mind it’s all Biden’s fault. I pointed out that gas prices go up and down all the time, and the president doesn’t have anything to do with it, and that gas is about the same price now as it was in 2018 when Trump was president, but she was having none of that, and insisted it’s because Biden stopped a pipeline. I don’t know what to say to stuff like that, plus the stupidity of buying a big vehicle when gas prices are really low and expecting that to last forever.

  155. 155.

    Ken

    @Kent: They did get a judge to ban protests within one mile of any district school. […] There are so many school scattered about the region that I think people will have to look hard to find any populated space that isn’t within 1 mile of at least one school.

    So Proud Boys are being treated like convicted sex offenders.  Maybe the Proud Boys can ask some of them for copies of the maps of places they’re allowed to be.

  156. 156.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    @Soprano2: Next time you hear that, just point out that the pipeline wasn’t even working yet, so how did killing it affect gas prices? Then state that gas prices were low because no one was driving thanks to lockdowns and ask if they want more lockdowns?

  159. 159.

    Steve in the ATL

    @JPL: apropos of nothing, a few months ago I was at a low end retailer near your home and saw something I can’t explain.  Black mother and her two daughters; the younger daughter, who looked about 14, was wearing a sweatshirt that proclaimed “VIRGINITY ROCKS!”

    So my question is: WTF?

  160. 160.

    Central Planning

    @Mai Naem mobile:

    I love the term and concept of designated asshole.

    That made me think of an exchange with a friend of one of my kids:

    Them: I’m going to get my first planet tattoo.
    Me: It will be your second. You already have Uranus.
    Them: …

  161. 161.

    matt

    These right wing shitheads think the most dangerous thing in America is the feelings of right wing shitheads. I say if Dan Crenshaw is going to start a revolution over vaccine mandates, get on with it so we can hang him. One less fuckin’ bitch.

  162. 162.

    trollhattan

    The enduring gift that is Larry Elder.

    A new poll from UC Berkeley finds Gov. Gavin Newsom is likely to retain his office and defeat the recall election next week by more than 20 points, according to the latest survey from the school’s Institute for Governmental Studies.

    The poll released Friday shows Newsom with a big lead just four days from the final day of voting, a dramatic turnaround from the institute’s previous poll, which found the race essentially neck and neck.

    Since then, Newsom’s campaign doubled down on framing the election as a Republican power grab, drawing a contrast between the liberal incumbent governor and Larry Elder, the conservative talk radio host who is the top-polling candidate on the replacement ballot.

    Pollsters surveyed nearly 10,000 registered voters between August 30 and September 6. They found 60.1% of likely voters oppose the recall, while 38.5% support it.

    “The findings underscore a significant change in tempo in the state, as decidedly more Californians are attending to the pending election, and are intent on voting No,” the institute’s co-director G. Cristina Mora said in a news release.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article254134413.html#storylink=cpy

  163. 163.

    germy

    This thread brought back memories:

    Post 9/11 thread for people to post the wildest shit they remember from 01 to 06

    I'll start:

    People thought Osama had an entire mountain hollowed out that he was using as his base and that's why AQ was hard to find and that somehow a group of like 30 dudes arranged this. pic.twitter.com/lQDupNdpTp

    — grimm (@ExileGrimm) September 10, 2021

  164. 164.

    Gravenstone

    @germy: Wonder how many of these “geniuses” who actually do end up quitting realize that the vaccine mandate will still be in effect at many of the places they think they’ll turn to for a new job? Likely precious few of them.

  165. 165.

    Steeplejack

    @debbie:

    GTFO. Although I do think, from that last video the FBI released, that the bomber is probably a woman. Gait, height, body language. But it’s a thin hypothesis. More of a spidey-sense hunch.

  169. 169.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    @geg6: I was just in an elevator with three masked people and one with a mask around her chin. Another woman asked her to pull it up. She did it but complained about how she didn’t like it, and it made her sweat, etc. To which we all said, us too.

    Special flowers can stay home.

    Or if they lose their job, they can take some of those restaurant jobs that aren’t filled

  170. 170.

    Subsole

    @Mai Naem mobile: A designated asshole, if you will?

     

    @SiubhanDuinne: The most nauseating thing about 9/11 is that we were never allowed to process it. Not honestly.

    The bodies weren’t even cold before Bush and his merry little band of pirates dug them up and started pimping them for war. Snatched our grief from the graveside to push his agenda.

    We still have not acknowedged it all.

    Not trying to be billy joe hardcore here, but these people really ought to live in pants-shitting abject terror that all the traumas we’ve swallowed for the sake of beltway civility might come bubbling up.

  172. 172.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Central Planning:

    Q: When is the Starship Enterprise like toilet paper?

    A: When it’s circling Uranus looking for Klingons.

    And pronouncing it Urine-us is almost as bad. Piss on that!

    We ought to change the name to Ouranos (Ooh-ra-nos) and call it an orrery.

  173. 173.

    Steve in the ATL

    @JPL: I assume there is a story there, but when I had daughters that age I certainly didn’t feel compelled to have them broadcast thoughts about their sex lives to the public at large.

  175. 175.

    Kent

    @Ken: So Proud Boys are being treated like convicted sex offenders.  Maybe the Proud Boys can ask some of them for copies of the maps of places they’re allowed to be.

    Somehow I suspect the Venn diagram of “Proud Boys” and “sex offenders” has substantial overlap.  They probably won’t have to look far to get that information!

  178. 178.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: I went though 3 masks yesterday at work due to them getting all sweaty.

    I also had an “engagement” with a customer, he was on his phone and saying “excuse me” to apparently get my attention to answer his question.  I don’t know if a person on a phone is talking to me or the person on the other end.  A few minutes later he approached me to ask his question and pulled down his mask saying that I couldn’t hear him before.  I told him that there was the mask was not the reason I didn’t respond to him before, but because he was on the phone.  He stormed off muttering about poor customer service.

  179. 179.

    Barbara

    @Subsole: ​ Yes, I plan to avoid any 9/11 discussion with anyone if I can help it. For me, the most shocking thing is how much we revel in our own loss and basically have zero willingness to look at same kind of loss times 10 that we imposed on Iraq. It’s like the only time we care about loss is if it gives us an excuse to make or prolong war. The plight of the people of Afghanistan being highlighted as we leave being only the latest example. Must shut up.

  180. 180.

    Nora Lenderbee

    @Uncle Cosmo: Right, a urinous planet is so much more tasteful.

    Why did the pronunciation become such a big deal anyway? People called it Yer Anus for 200 years without embarrassment. What’s next–penal institutions become “pennal” and peanuts become “pie-nuggets”?

  181. 181.

    Kayla Rudbek

    @Steeplejack:  Mister Dairy Junkie also didn’t know how to deal with stairs when we first got him. He was apparently an apartment cat. He learned very quickly, especially when we put a hook and eye latch on the door to the basement that allowed him to get through to the basement stairs and kept the dog out.

  184. 184.

    Steeplejack

    @eclare:

    Cats are very suspicious of anything that might impugn their dignity. When the housecat got to the point where she couldn’t reliably jump up from the floor to the desktop to get to her workstation, I moved one of my easy chairs slightly closer so that she could jump on that, get on the padded arm and then jump over to the desk. But there was a transition period: “Of course you can still jump up. I just moved the chair because it’s a better angle for the TV.” ?

  188. 188.

    MomSense

    My son told me that he has friends at school who want to be vaccinated but their parents won’t let them.  It’s infuriating.  These kids are forced to deal with the anxiety of being in school without protection from the vaccine.

  189. 189.

    taumaturgo

    From TikTok: ” Don’t you know that the virus is no longer transmitted by the hands, mouth or nose, is know transmitted by assholes.”

  191. 191.

    Kay

    Ken Thomas
    @KThomasDC
    ·4h
    Biden on Covid after remarks at a DC school: “I am so disappointed that particularly some Republican governors have been so cavalier with the health of these kids, so cavalier with the health of their communities. … we’re playing for real here – this isn’t a game.”

    Love this. Governors are absolutely fair game and national Democrats don’t go after them enough.
    Biden’s poll numbers were falling but so were the poll numbers of Right wing governors in Texas and Florida. That can be useful to us in the midterms.

  192. 192.

    cain

    @Roger Moore:

    I’m not so sure – we are dealing with people who live in a completely different reality – where they would rather eat ivermectin and ruin their kidneys and possibly go blind than taking a goddam vaccine.

    So why not quit your job? You’re willing to put your life on the line for it – why not your job. We are living in strange times.

  193. 193.

    Subsole

    @Kent: Hey, what’s up with the cops up there not getting vaxxed? I heard they basically told the mayor to cram it, and the mayor said ok.

    How do the cops have such a free hand? I would have expected Portland at least to keep a pretty tight rein on their police.

  195. 195.

    Roger Moore

    @Steve in the ATL: ​
     

    So my question is: WTF?

    My assumption is that they’re members of one of those churches that makes a big deal about pre-marital sex. Proudly proclaiming your adherence to the ideal is a big part of that whole worldview.

  197. 197.

    Kelly

    @Subsole: Oregon has long been heavy with bipartisan antivaxxers. Years before Covid the leg passed laws to prevent vaccine mandates for HEALTH CARE WORKERS and POLICE. Large health care organizations started defying the law a month or so ago. Also you can exempt your children from school vaccination requirements after watching a short pro vax video on the web and printing your certificate when it ends.

  198. 198.

    Roger Moore

    @Subsole:

    I would have expected Portland at least to keep a pretty tight rein on their police.

    The Portland police have openly allied themselves with the Proud Boys without any kind of repercussions, so there’s no reason to be surprised they can get away with other stuff.

  199. 199.

    Subsole

    @Kelly: Huh. So there really wasn’t much that could be done. Bummer.

    Thanks for the explanation. I know nothing about the area but what I read. The cops up there just sound totally out of control. Like, if there were more minorities around for them to hit they’d be 90’s LAPD bad, from what people say.

  201. 201.

    Subsole

    @Roger Moore: Yeah, that’s what I hear. And I’m told Seattle wasn’t a whole lot better during Pharoah Dimses’ Reign of Error.

    I’m just curious what tools are available to change it and what the roots of the issue are. I am told a LOT of city cops are recruited from little towns that absolutely hate city folks.

  207. 207.

    JoyceH

    @Roger Moore: ​
     

    I think it was good Galileo’s name was ignored and the precedent of naming celestial objects after one’s patron was rejected.

    Speaking of naming conventions, don’t know if you guys have heard that it’s been decided that after we run out of the Greek alphabet for COVID variants, the plan is to move to stars and constellations for variant names. The Arcturus variant? Capella? Spica?

  209. 209.

    Ken

    @Steve in the ATL:  I only know pop stars who are covered in my monthly AARP journal.

    You need to grab some of the magazines from the checkout line. Then you’ll know about all the modern stars like Judy Garland, Jimmy Stewart, and Katherine Hepburn.

    (Based on actual sightings in recent weeks, Life magazine caters to an older demographic than the AARP.)

  210. 210.

    Ken

    @Nora Lenderbee: What’s next–penal institutions become “pennal” and peanuts become “pie-nuggets”?

    Seems linguistically fair, consider the number of alternate words for “penis”.

  212. 212.

    Roger Moore

    @JoyceH:

    I would have preferred to go through the Hebrew alphabet first at the very least.  I guess some of the names might get confusing: was that the alpha variant or the aleph variant?

  215. 215.

    Chris T.

    @Jeffro:

    The short version of this is going to be my response to conservatives’ bleating for, oh, the next decade or so: “You’re mad about X? What are you going to do, storm the Capitol and beat on cops?”

    Make it “kill”: “What are you going to do, storm the Capitol and kill six cops this time?”

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