Here’s a little observation for anyone (probably nobody here) waiting around for DeathSantis and Abbottoir to show any shame about their massive counts of unvaccinated deaths: my guess is that they feel the opposite of shame. Instead, both of those guys feel the satisfaction of power. Their supporters would rather die than take a free shot, all because of them and their political movement. That’s the kind of sick devotion that can only occupy the masturbatory dreams of most wannabe dictators. These two governors don’t need to fantasize — they can experience the real thing.
That said, out here in levelland, I saw a real-time example of how experience trumps the bullshit that the death eaters are peddling. Late last week, the first booster clinic was held at the local hospital. Even though I’m on the edge of official eligibility, I took my Dad (91) and lined up with a bunch of old folks to get my Moderna booster. Everyone there was older than me — most of them were in their 80’s and 90’s. I’ve known a lot of them since childhood. I’m sure most of them were life-long Republicans, but they also grew up on farms and watched siblings and young relatives die of diseases that now are completely preventable by vaccine. Many of them were parents of small children when the polio vaccine was invented. Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Kristi Noem can peddle their lies about Joe Biden and CRT, and perhaps some of them will buy it, but they weren’t going to buy any bullshit about vaccines.
After we got our shots and were waiting the required 15 minutes, one of the old guys was joking about someone he knew who thought the vaccine implanted a tracker. He pulled out his phone and said, “What the hell do they think this thing does?” In a town where nary a mask is seen, and the vaccination rate is just a smidge over 1/3 of the population, it was refreshing to see that there was one corner of the world that wasn’t completely overwhelmed by a tidal wave of Fox News bullshit.
guachi
In about a week TX will pass CA for most COVID deaths of any state. TX is, needless to say, not the largest state in the country. If I were the Governor of CA I’d rub it in repeatedly. In fact, I’d pay to run ads on TV in TX with that information.
Dakota Expat
Oh yeah, my experience, too. Those old-timers remember — going out to Dakota for Thanksgiving; 92 yr old Mom is already well-boosted. Family lore still a living thing — we talk about her uncle (my great uncle) who died well before she was born in the 1918 pandemic. Like it was yesterday. Love the cell-phone story though!
Snarki, child of Loki
Got my booster and my phone is *STILL* unable to do 5G!
What dishonest crookster created these vaccines, anyway?1??
dr. bloor
Meh. The flatland olds might trust their own experience over the propaganda, but they’re sure as shit gonna keep voting Republican.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@guachi: Wow, going by the deaths verses infections Texas is ether under reporting the number of people infected or has an exceptional number of over 60 un-vaccinated.
Baud
@guachi:
“Come to Cali if you want to live.”
ant
<<my guess is that they feel the opposite of shame>>
these people have antisocial personality disorder.
there are a bunch of emotions that their brains have been short circuited not to feel: guilt, sorrow, grief, shame, remorse, etc.
It causes no empathy. no moral compass. Omar Little called it “a code”. Officer McNulty is a character that suffered with this condition.
These people gleefully shovel sand into the gears of civilization. They are incapable of groking collective action problem solving.
Nothing is ever their fault.
They are deplorable.
Old Man Shadow
I don’t think any of us are surprised at all that the “pro-life” party there actually views human life as cheap, disposable, and a resource to be spent for their own gain.
It’s not like they’ve been hiding their views or deeds.
Betty Cracker
That squares with my wingnut elders, who are all vaccinated. They’ll vote for DeSantis again. They’ll vote for Trump if he runs. But they weren’t dumb enough to reject a free shot that can protect them from a virus that is especially deadly for their generational cohort. The younger ones were/are that dumb.
ant
@ant: I believe childhood lead poisoning from gas burned from 1940-1980 is playing a roll in the state of the world today. People who were children during those years are in charge today.
guachi
@Baud: LOL. They could get Schwarzenegger to do the ad spot. “Come with me if you want to live”.
Yeah, I know it was Michael Biehn who said it, so sue me.
Old Man Shadow
@guachi: Arnold said it in the sequel.
trollhattan
Heard a BBC report today from Ukraine, where Covid is surging a third time with higher case and death counts than ever. Small fraction of the population is vaccinated and they’re deeply suspicious, even doctors (sound familiar?). They are willing to die rather than take “that poison.” That they willingly sacrifice their kids too is the real crime.
To my knowledge Florida was never part of the Soviet Union, but one can never be too sure.
Baud
Via Reddit
https://i.redd.it/3rw312z6bky71.jpg
ant
@Old Man Shadow: “the “pro-life” party”
It makes sense if you think of “pro-life” as being “pro- white patriarchy”. They just don’t like women having the power to make important decisions. That’s it.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@ant: Maybe, to me Death Santa and Abattoir come across as utterly spineless cowards from what I’ve seen. I think anti-social personality disorder more fits Cumeo who was clearly getting off on he was making the pandemic denalist cry. But with Abbot and deSantis they both seem terrified of making any decision because someone might be offended.
Kent
Jennifer Rubin absolutely nails it with her column today on evangelicals and racism. Use an incognito tab if the paywall blocks you: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/11/09/america-cannot-give-evangelicals-want-they-want/
Which makes me think that a lot of this MAGA anti-vax bullshit is really ultimately about race. During the first year of the pandemic the dominant thread of the coverage was that the pandemic was mostly hitting inner cities and people of color and I think that notion somehow got fixated into their pea brains such that they think resisting vaccines and other measures somehow has a racist undertone. White folks have always thought they were immune to so many of the other ills that befall our society from policing to social welfare. Why not Covid as well?
I’m related to a bunch of these folks and I honestly don’t understand them anymore. I used to think that I did, but no longer.
Nettoyeur
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: both could be true
TheOtherHank
Is that a Social Distortion reference in the title?
My 91 year old father in law is unvaccinated and proud of it. He’s got PhD in oceanography and is quite convinced that that piece of paper from the mid-60s means that all his (regurgitated from Fox) opinions are correct. Luckily for him, he lives in a blue-ish part of California and has been effectively socially isolating for that 20 or so years, so Covid hasn’t killed him yet.
Brantl
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: If brains were saddle leather, both of them combined couldn’t saddle a gnat.
trollhattan
@Kent: The crazy white folk angle isn’t wrong but does not explain why some minority groups have tragically low vaccination rates too. In our county vaccines are readily available to everybody and there has been a ton of outreach targeted to poor communities, but the actual vaccination rates remain very skewed and the total percentage is effectively stalled.
brendancalling
“Their supporters would rather die than take a free shot, all because of them and their political movement.”
Their supporters are a collection of ghouls, death-eaters, cultists, racists, gun nuts, troglodytes, and other assorted deplorables. If they “would rather die than take a free shot,” who am I to stop them. Give the people what they want.
Old School
@TheOtherHank:
Google thinks it is Lie For You by Snakehips & Jess Glynne feat. A Boogie wit da Hoodie & Davido.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Nettoyeur: yes, sure. both are certainly indifferent to whole groups of people, but they do come across as desperately needy for approval from the people they see as real.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Old School: I was thinking of a song by Garbage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmR7dzBoQ78
But I’m sure those lyrics are not original, since the emotion behind them is as old as time.
Another Scott
Apparently Sununu is not going to run for Senate against Maggie Hassan (D). (Story at TheHill.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
My impression having listened to my wife who is a primary care physician dealing with this for the past 2 years is the following.
MAGA white resistance to the vaccine is political and ideological and hardened into obstinance based on white identity, fox news, and all that bullshit.
Low vaccination rates in poor minority communities is more due to them being largely underserved in every other aspect of healthcare. We do a shitty job dealing with obesity, diabetes, cancer, prenatal care, diet, fitness, preventative care, and everything else in this community because our for-profit health care system is so difficult if you are poor. Covid vaccines are just one of a hundred other ways that we are failing poor and minority communities when it comes to health care. And, of course, absent good primary care they are subject to the same social media bullshit as everyone else. But my wife thinks poor vaccine rates in the minority community is largely neglect by us and them, not hardened opposition. She says, for example, that the only nurses getting fired in her clinic for not vaccinating are the white ones. The black and Hispanic and Asian ones almost always get vaccinated rather than lose their jobs
“outreach” is not really so meaningful or effective if it is solely for Covid and not for any other aspect of healthcare as it should be.
Old School
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Oh good. Usually I’ve at least heard of the bands you reference. I was fearing that I was growing more out of touch.
Kay
I saw the same thing among GOP pollworkers, who skew older. It was sad. A lot of their conversations with voters they know was about how many people they knew who had died of covid- their contemporaries.
SiubhanDuinne
Sad to learn of Max Cleland’s death yesterday. I had the pleasure of knowing him a little when he was Georgia’s Secretary of State. He was treated abysmally by the Republican Lie Machine when he ran for a second term as Senator. May he rest in well-earned peace.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/us/politics/max-cleland-dead.html
trollhattan
@Kent:
There’s an element of suspicion at work as well, here anyway.
And while one would expect some correlation between case rates and vaccination rates, not so much as it turns out.
leeleeFL
@dr. bloor: Mayhap true, but I can hope some will not. It’s pretty much all I have to keep me sane here in Sunny Death Camp, Florida.
Also, I have to move again, I am helping the youngest GrandBaby navigate 7th grade language arts in my spare time, and I had a Medical couple tell me, honestly, that they got vaccinated because of work, but are worried about their teens, because they don’t know if it would affect their fertility. My Daughter is the same. I live on the edge of terror sometimes. The Doctor half of couple said something about non-sterile vaccine? I give up!
ETA- 7th grade is the new Freshman year if college by the looks of the online lessons! I see good and bad here!
Baud
@Another Scott:
Oh wow. That’s huge, I think.
eclare
@SiubhanDuinne: Oh…I hadn’t heard that. I lived in ATL from 1991 to 2004, and I remember that disgusting campaign against Max Cleland. Truly a great, inspirational person. RIP.
E.
My school board just voted to defy Newsom’s mask mandates for schools. The crowd was waving “Let’s Go Brandon” signs and screaming about freedom. Lots of code-words (“urban,” “L.A.” “Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness,” “All men are created equal.”)
But what was interesting to me is how during the runup to the meeting on Facebook the anti-maskers continuously slipped into anti-CRT talk, bemoaning how their “beautiful little granddaughters are being taught to be racists” and so forth. Then they would be gently nudged back into complaining about masks.
Baud
@E.:
“Everyone, everyone. Please turn your White Panic Hymnals to page 11. That’s page 11. We’re not practicing ‘I rebuke thee, CRT’ today.”
Frankensteinbeck
Power is a sideline. It’s about being an asshole. Have you seen the photos of Republican politicians and their shit-eating grins when they sign legislation they know will hurt people? They are elected by assholes to be assholes, and they get off on it.
Cermet
@trollhattan: Really? Like you haven’t read how blacks were experiment upon and allowed to die untreated from a treatable illness? Or how modern med (and white doctors) still discount their issues and they die at far higher rates than whites for identical illnesses? Really? And you read this blog?
eclare
@Frankensteinbeck: QFT. The cruelty is the point.
Edmund Dantes
https://twitter.com/eveasks/status/1457770645429702656?s=21
we could bring back slavery. Problem solved
Cermet
@brendancalling: The majority aren’t willing to avoid a vaccine and risk death because they want to ‘own’ the libs. Their primary sources of information all tell them that the illness isn’t that bad, the vaccine isn’t useful and that they need to avoid it due to questionable safety. That is fox, and face book combined – these people have very good reasons – they just don’t know how wrong they are till they get ill and end up in the hospital.
hueyplong
This is your weekly reminder that Lincoln Project bigwig Rick Wilson was an active participant in the slur campaign against Max Cleland.
leeleeFL
@Edmund Dantes: That twat can bite me! Patriotic duty to not be able to support yourself and your family! Seriously, Bitch! “F” right the hell off!
Captain C
@trollhattan:
I recall hearing that a lot of ex-Soviets, and also more recent Russian emigres, have settled in Florida.
Just Chuck
@Snarki, child of Loki: You probably just need to get your boobs remagnetized and then it’ll work.
trollhattan
@Cermet:
Uh, okay, and?
Just Chuck
@ant: It makes even more sense if you think of every word out of their holes as mendacious bullshit from the very start.
persistentillusion
@SiubhanDuinne: A dear friend worked for him for years and they remained close after they both left politics. She said that his passing was due to congestive heart failure and was peaceful, which is a mercy.
RaflW
On the topic of Covid, my partner found out yesterday that State Farm is defending their continued use of Kaaron Rodgers as a spokesmodel. He fired this off to his agent, and posted it on social media and a few friends say they are going to use it to write to theirs. I’d be thrilled if any BJers who are State Farmers might craft a similar message to their agent. Shit don’t change unless we make demands.
Reconsidering my choice of insurance company after 28 years. Fired this off to my agent; feel free to borrow to do the same.
trollhattan
@RaflW:
Hard to believe they’re staying with this asshat; I checked and State Farm does write life insurance. Marketing and the actuaries are NOT talking. What’s next, discounts for drivers who forswear using the seat belts?
We don’t use them and I’d have real heartburn if we did.
He’s being allowed to continue playing, yet the league suspends guys who test positive for THC.
eclare
@RaflW: Great letter, I hope it catches on. I would send it but I have All State.
Chief Oshkosh
@RaflW: I have a friend who used to work in the insurance industry. State Farm was considered one of the worst for just about all parties involved. Their peers at Allstate give them a run for their money, though.
WRT to Kaaron, I guess messages to the company like the one you cite couldn’t hurt, though also putting it on social media might better amplify the message.
Chief Oshkosh
@trollhattan:
The league is run by older rich white guys, right?
catclub
I could have sworn that various countries in Asia were labelled uncivilized by us because for them, human life was cheap.
JaneE
I see that here too. Older folks get vaccinated. We have had 3 or 4 of the local “famous names” die from Covid, including one whose funeral is tomorrow. The nut jobs tend to be on the younger side of 50. The last few weeks signs saying “Choose Freedom not Fear” have been springing up where you would expect. I strongly suspect that what they label “fear” is what I would call freedom.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan: One of the cooks here died of COVID last week. I assume he was unvaccinated. Food Services had the lowest vaccination rate of any department here. He was Hispanic. What a waste.
Kay
@E.:
I think the anti-mask and anti-vaxx people are bad political allies for the anti-CRT celebrities, who are fancier,so I hope they keep joining up. That’s a good coalition for us.
Kay
I love how they are incapable of reporting something that is negative to Republicans without the (required) “but Democrats suck” disclaimer.
It’s a work rule. No exceptions.
RaflW
@Chief Oshkosh: They’ve been good to him. Somewhat complicated HOA/homeowner’s claim 15+ years ago, a couple of dumb car collision claims. They don’t have a very big part of our combined insurance, but it’s a looong relationship on his side.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I know a few of us here are fans of the writer Magdi Semrau, who tweets under the handle Mangy Jay. She published in The Washington Post today
RaflW
@JaneE: Freedom for many of these folks means “I can be a bull in a china shop, and no one demands payment for broken sh*t, or even says boo back to me.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: good Senate news:
the son of the old racist warthog from the first Bush White House is apparently popular. Probably doesn’t want to wrestle trumpist pigs in the primary
The Pale Scot
@ant:
Hey, Omar Little had empathy, just not for those people in the game. As I repeatedly told people back in the day, “you want to be a player, you can’t bitch about getting played”, “you wanna play with people who have guns, why do you think you won’t get shot?”
PS. There were civilians, and there were players. Big distinction.
schrodingers_cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Ds flipped a lot of mayoral races in NH. He is just reading the writing on the wall.
Gravenstone
@Edmund Dantes: Secretary Mrs. Turtle can fuck right the fuck off! And take her decrepit husband straight to Hell with her.
Mike G
“When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint meaningfully at their capacity for evil. It is its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.”
– Eric Hoffer, “The Passionate State of Mind” # 91
Jim, Foolish Literalist
funny Senate news (or maybe not cause trump was President so fukiffino)
I did not know this quack had been a grand medical muckety-muck at Columbia. If you had told me he went to Hollywood Upstairs Medical College, I would’ve found that more plausible. Oprah has a lot to answer for.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The Ohio GOP senate candidates are awful too. I got a Republican to tell me he won’t vote for Mandel OR Vance.
It’s not complicated- they’re both horrible in almost every way. Vance is slightly more phony than Mandel- Mandel has succeeded in actually becoming the awful person he used to pretend to be. It’s more authentic now.
Vance’s non profit t is a grift-er-oma. He won’t release the records but eventually he’ll have to. Short story? He took the money and paid himself. The rest will be filler.
JustRuss
You know, if I knew the leaders of my tribe were bullshitting to prevent me from getting a treatment that might save my life, I’d consider switching sides. But I guess that’s just me.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: That is hilarious. He’ll fit right in. I remember reading a few years ago that he had been a respectable doctor….once upon a time.
Kay
This Trump backed candidate is inadvertently hysterical.
It’s basically “I hate women” for 3 minutes. I wonder what’s wrong with his eyes. Why he doesn’t blink. Too much rage to blink?
raven
RIP Max Cleland. I went to a Veterans Day event in the Georgia State Capitol in the 80’s. He signed a copy of his book “Strong in the Broken Places” for everyone in the line and it took hours. He was a good guy and what the pukes did to him was a preview of these fucking scumbag republicans we have now.
lowtechcyclist
@RaflW:
An apt summation!
But since you used that expression, to the tune of the March of the Toreadors from Carmen:
Please Keep Your Bull Outside the China Shop
Please keep your bull outside the china shop
No bulls allowed, that’s where they stop
It’s the rule, the way it’s always been,
Your bull cannot come in…
J R in WV
Lots going on here recently. Septic system over-full, pumped nearly 2,000 gallons out yesterday. Was prescribed compression stockings to help my feet, that appears to be working well.
Hunting season (bow hunting for white-tail deer mostly) started. Last night one of the dogs barfed up at least a quart of bright red meat… no one stepped in it, fortunately.
One of the dogs, the older white lab mix, is seriously overweight (surprise, surprise! ) and all of them are being fed weight loss kibble. But now they can eat all the deer they can choke down, just somewhere out in the woods. Leaving the kibble in the dish, because they can’t choke it down.
Got a big box of parts in for the tail-wheel of the bush-hog, which is borked/broken. Can’t mow without the tail-wheel. Don’t have much energy at all…
Otherwise, just cranky and old, as I told someone the other day, I have enough arthritis for 3 old guys!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
also Keith Kellogg, and Johnny McEntee, whose names we’re going to be hearing a lot in the next couple weeks
J R in WV
@Kay:
Which recreational drug makes your pupils really, really small like that? ‘Cause that guy took a boatload of that shit before that montage was recorded~!!~
I think his blinking was just edited out, someone didn’t care that that would make him look even like a loon than he already did! If I was running against the guy, I would pay to run that footage over and over, forever. Thanks, TFG, for supporting another crazed nut job!
cmorenc
@Kent:
Alas, Jennifer Rubin’s piece is behind the Washington Post subscription paywall, and the Post (as with the FTNYT) have for awhile now figured out how to defeat the workaround of using incognito mode in your browser.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Charlie Pierce is unconcerned about invitations to cocktail parties
Sister Golden Bear
@Old Man Shadow: The sanctity of life only applies from conception to birth, doncha know.
Quiltingfool
@Kay: The “protecting women from dinosaurs “ statement. I guess he thinks the cartoon classic “The Flintstones” was a documentary.
The stupid, it burns.
raven
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Great article but Max and McCain were Vietnam Vets, era-Vets are vets who served in other than Vietnam.
Kent
She basically argues that white evangelical Christians are motivated more by race than anything else. Not abortion, not schools, not taxes, etc. But race. And that their true political aspirations are for the government to restore the white ethno-nationalist and Christian American state that used to exist by default before immigration and diversity made “their” country unrecognizable.
And that media and politicians who pretend to look for other “reasons” behind their conservative swing like “economic insecurity” and culture war bullshit are just missing the forest for the trees.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: this stat surprised me, and not in a good way
RobertB
@Kay: I guess he’s voting for Gibbons? I saw a Gibbons commercial every five minutes during Jeopardy right before the election last Tuesday. We know Gibbons is for God, the USA, and football (not necessarily in that order), and against Colin Kaepernick, Nancy Pelosi, and immigrants.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: My God
ROFL
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: it shouldn’t, go google Civil War Art and behold all the R E Lee icons. They really made that dork a secular saint for the South.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Mike G: Yep, I am pretty sure that’s why OTC blew off the the Rep who does anime of him knifing OCT. If he meant it, he wouldn’t be marking cartoons.
sab
@Kent: Early this year when shots were hard to come by the only pkace we could get them was out on towns in suburban and rural Ohio. A lot of minority people would just not risking going out there. They didn’t know the way. They might get lost. The drive was long. What if they had car trouble. What would be their recption when they got there.
We joked that the shots were available because the folks out there didn’t want them, but I think the cities were really underprovided until about September. If shots had been available easily locally they would have been used.