Category: Health / Healthcare / Illness / Vaccines
Michael Smerconish: Voter suppression may not be reason Democrats lose midterms
GOP Senate candidate runs ad featuring armed ‘showdown’ with Dems
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: Republicans & the wealthy rigged the economy and now they are rigging the elections for the same reasons, to give themselves more wealth and power
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Scottie’s word today
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Rigged economy sold as ‘trickle down’.
The ‘do as you’re told’, ‘comply or die’, ‘only mobsters take the fifth’, ‘law & order’ bad faith cult.
Being a complete idiot would get you fired from most jobs. Republicans elect them.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Oh Klem. Do you not understand the difference between a right and a freedom? The Pettus Bridge marchers were seeking to exercise their voting “rights” as granted in the Constitution. Truckers, or for that matter, anyone operating on public highways, are exercising a privilege that comes with defined conditions and restrictions. They have the freedom to choose whether they want to cross the border, and comply with the conditions, or take local gigs only. And all this over a freakin” vaccine when the truckers have MANDATORY medical exams as conditions for their licenses. Remember the way the Selma to Montgomery marchers disrupted the supply chain and threw thousands of people out of work? Remember the swastika flags? The open expressions of anti-Semtisim? Remember the calls to overthrow the government? Remember? ‘Cause I don’t.
Yes as the science changes so does the government advice. Normal and acceptable. Anything else is propaganda by those who deny science and want to promote confusion and dissent.
Right wing cartoon sites I have commented on today.
https://comicskingdom.com/lee-judge/
https://comicskingdom.com/lee-judge/2022-02-12/ again
https://comicskingdom.com/darrin-bell/ I expect a bunch of crap on this one, don’t expect it will survive Republican snowflake outrage.
https://comicskingdom.com/mike-smith/
https://comicskingdom.com/lee-judge/2022-02-12/ Again
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And now some for fun
Rand Paul: I Hope Truckers “Clog Up” US Cities
The Louisville Courier-Journal reports:
In an interview Thursday with the Daily Signal, a conservative media site, the U.S. senator from Kentucky said “it’d be great” if the protests spread to Washington, D.C., when asked about his thoughts on the protests and how the nation’s capital would react if they spread south across the border.
“The thing is, it wouldn’t shut the city down because the government workers haven’t come to work in two years anyway, so I don’t know if it’d affect D.C.,” Paul joked. “It’d be nice change. We’d actually have some traffic.”
“I hope the truckers do come to America, and I hope they clog up cities,” Paul said. “We’re seeing a break in the dam now. Several Democratic governors are finally sort of relinquishing. What they’re finding is moms and dads are upset about this, they’re not just Republicans. Everybody is upset about this.”
Read the full article.
Remember Rand Paul has large investments in medical companies that produce treatments for covid. it is to his benefit to keep people getting sick and needing medical help / treatment for Covid. So why do what is right when he can stuff his pockets with money from the suffering of the people.
Daily cartoon / meme roundup. Fox news viewers are only about 3 million out of a country of 336 million. Democrats need to remember that and not run scared from the right wing media
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Scottie’s world today
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There is a maga group trying to finish destroying a very important preserve that tRump against court rulings just started destroying for his vanity wall. They want the preserve gone, revoked , or just ruined beyond ability to function so they can get their wall section that wont make a bit of difference.
Yes that would cause kid real distress. Funny thing about those who think that teaching history about slavery causes white kids discomfort forget is black kids experience racism long before they start school.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
I find the misleading right wing media’s obsession with a civil servant weird. Dr Fauci is accomplished yes, but he only a bureaucrat. He has no power or authority to make rules and regulations. His only task is to advise based on his skill and education, like others in the government. Yet the right has developed an almost cult like mythology around this person. I wonder why? Could it be he is an intelligent well skill person who knows what he is talking about? Could it be he refutes and shoots down all the right wing nonsense over Covid and public health measures? Or could it be he disagreed with the cult leader tRump and the followers of the dear leader must now attack him with everything they have to protect the snowflake that claimed Covid would just disappear like magic called tRump? I wonder?
Silly cartoon. China doesn’t allow protests and has ever person allowed to enter the stadium vetted. No one would dare protest.
Right wing cartoon comment sections I commented on
https://comicskingdom.com/david-m-hitch/
https://www.creators.com/read/gary-varvel Good reading, I am very proud of this exchange
https://www.creators.com/read/a.f.-branco
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And now some for fun
Oklahoma Considers Database For Pregnant People As Roe Hangs In The Balance
The Oklahoma Legislature started its 2022 session this week with a slew of anti-abortion bills, which isn’t uncommon. “This is my 12th year in the legislature now, and it feels like every year we go through this,” said Oklahoma House Minority Leader Emily Virgin (D).
But this year’s anti-abortion bills ― 11 were pre-filed before the legislative session even began ― bring fresh menace. The state’s Republican governor has already promised that he would sign any abortion restriction the Oklahoma Legislature sends his way. Moreover, some bills, which clearly go beyond what’s allowed by Roe v. Wade and normally would immediately get bogged down in the court system, could actually become law given the looming U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which could upend five decades of abortion rights.
And the bills coming to the floor range from extreme to downright dystopian, including one that would create a state-run database of some pregnant people in the state.
“[W]e have absolutely seen the bills get more and more extreme,” said Virgin. “That’s due to the national landscape and the conservative majority on the Supreme Court. I think the anti-abortion movement has been strengthened and emboldened by that. And with our current governor, it’s pretty likely that he’ll sign any anti-abortion bill that makes it to his desk.”
Last year alone, Oklahoma passed a six-week abortion ban, a “trigger” ban if the high court rules against Roe v. Wade, a total ban and restrictions on medication abortion and other measures restricting reproductive rights (almost all have been blocked in lower courts).
The 2022 pre-filed bills include two six-week abortion bans and a total ban with similar enforcement mechanisms to Texas’ draconian restriction that deputizes private citizens to sue to enforce the law. Other proposed measures give personhood status to fetuses, ban abortion at 30 days and add a constitutional amendment declaring Oklahoma does not protect the right to abortion.
The most radical of the bunch is Senate Bill 1167, filed by state Sen. George Burns (R). Titled the Every Mother Matters Act, or EMMA, it would establish a government database for pregnant people looking to get abortions in Oklahoma. Each pregnant person will call a hotline and be connected with a “pre-abortion resource” assistant, but that person is legally not allowed to refer a patient to an abortion provider. The pregnant person would then be assigned a “unique identifying number” in the database, and abortion providers would be mandated to keep the information for seven years.
As part of the program, the woman will “be connected with a care agent who will provide, at no cost to her, an assessment of eligibility and offer assistance in obtaining support services, other than abortion, for her or the unborn child’s biological father,” according to a press statement from Burns’ office. The services include information on adoption, housing, employment, child care and more, but not on abortion care. It is unclear if the hotline assistants will have any medical expertise in reproductive care, but the legislation does bar anyone who’s worked for an abortion clinic in the past from signing up to be a resource agent.
“Many women facing unexpected pregnancies turn to abortion because they feel like they have no choice. We want to make sure they have an opportunity to connect with medical, financial and other resources that they may not know about,” Burns said in the press statement. “This legislation will do that as well as provide screening to identify those who’ve been victims of crime so that, with the woman’s consent, a report can be made to the appropriate law enforcement agency.”
Burns added that his “ultimate goal is ending abortion.” He did not respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
But, like so many of Oklahoma’s pre-filed abortion restrictions, S.B. 1167 is redundant. Oklahoma already has informed-consent laws that require pregnant people be told about parenting and adoption as abortion alternatives.
The proposed legislation is “truly off the deep end,” said Kristin Ford, vice president of communications and research at NARAL Pro-Choice America. “This bill is just so beyond the bounds of what any rational person would consider an appropriate role for politicians to play in people’s personal lives and family decisions.”
“Despite the framing that this is about helping folks, it’s pretty obvious that this is about expanding the state’s surveillance apparatus over pregnant people. People who aren’t even seeking abortion are going to fall under the surveillance apparatus, too.”
– Grace Howard, author of “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood”Tracking pregnant people who are seeking abortions is a slippery slope, added Grace Howard, an assistant professor of justice studies at San Jose State University who is writing a book, “The Pregnancy Police: Conceiving Crime, Arresting Personhood.”
“Despite the framing that this is about helping folks, it’s pretty obvious that this is about expanding the state’s surveillance apparatus over pregnant people. People who aren’t even seeking abortion are going to fall under the surveillance apparatus, too,” Howard said.
It’s especially concerning because the maternal mortality rate in Oklahoma is abysmal. Specifically, the state has one of the highest maternal mortality rates for Black people in the country.
“The resources that are spent on this redundant, unhelpful and burdensome abortion legislation could be better utilized,” said Dr. Joshua Yap, an abortion provider for Planned Parenthood Great Plains’ Tulsa clinic.
If any of these restrictions pass ― but especially something like a 30-day or six-week abortion ban ― they won’t only affect Oklahomans. For five months now, Texans have been coming to Oklahoma to receive abortion care due to the Lone Star State’s extreme six-week abortion ban. Yap told HuffPost in November that his clinic staff had to double- or even triple-book their schedule to accommodate patients, 75% of which were from Texas.
Oklahoma abortion clinics were already booking weeks out when the Texas ban went into effect, delaying care and pushing people farther and farther into pregnancy. Those ripple effects will be even greater if Oklahoma’s access to abortion is further limited.
Yap believes Oklahoma and Texas patients who can travel will head to Kansas, a neighboring state that only has four clinics left. “Barely six months ago, we were trying to prepare ourselves emotionally for the Texas law going into effect, and now we’re having to re-brace ourselves going into this legislative session,” he said. “It feels like we’re really powerless from preventing these measures from going through.”
The decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, involving a Mississippi bill, is expected sometime this spring. Most advocates and pro-abortion rights lawmakers are not very optimistic given the court’s conservative majority.
When asked how Virgin, the Oklahoma House Democratic leader, is feeling about the pending decision, she responded that she’s scared.
“It’s scary to think about not having all of the health care options available to folks who find themselves in that situation. I’ve talked to people who run the gamut of reasons why they seek abortion care, and I think of all of them when I think about Roe potentially being overturned,” she said.
“We know that across the country, people do believe that there should be a right to access this kind of care. Whether it gets overturned or not, I think that we still have to fight for those options to be available.”
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: It is time to really look at the standard of living and quality of life in the US
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Scottie’s world today
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The US incarcerates more people than any other country. We might want to be careful when throwing around charges of human rights abuses.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
The facts change and the people responsible for public policy have to change their advice to match the new circumstances.
Complete projection and trying to hide what they are doing. Remember this is the party that is pushing bills to ban subjects from being taught in schools, banning even talking about LGBTQ+, requiring teachers to wear cameras, out kids to parents, has a media arm called Fox News, and trying to call an insurrection riot legitimate political discourse.
I wondered how long it would take for the right wing cartoonist to pick this up. Took less than a day from when Fox News aired a misleading story on it and the cartoonist drawing what the misinformation is. No the US government is not buying crack pipes. They are funding ways to keep addicts from dying or over dosing along with spreading disease. Beau has a good video on this with some of the things the bill funds. So I expect this to be a big shit storm on the comment section of the radical right cartoons.
The preponderance of evidence indicates that mask wearing reduces transmissibility per contact by reducing transmission of infected respiratory particles in both laboratory and clinical contexts. Public mask wearing is most effective at reducing spread of the virus when compliance is high.
Leffler et al. (29) used a multiple regression approach, including a range of policy interventions and country and population characteristics, to infer the relationship between mask use and SARS-CoV-2 transmission. They found that transmission was 7.5 times higher in countries that did not have a mask mandate or universal mask use, a result similar to that found in an analogous study of fewer countries (30). Another study looked at the difference between US states with mask mandates and those without, and found that the daily growth rate was 2.0 percentage points lower in states with mask mandates, estimating that the mandates had prevented 230,000 to 450,000 COVID-19 cases by May 22, 2020 (31).
https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2014564118
We’re not going away from mask mandates because they’re ineffective. We’re going away from them because the will to use them is evaporating.
I don’t have a problem with people who don’t want to wear a mask, however I do have a problem with people going into establishments without a mask demanding service when the owners of those establishments require their employees to wear a mask. House rules, follow the house rules of get out of the house. If you do get sick are you willing to forgo expecting your health insurance company to pay your medical bills since you decided not to take precautions?
^^^Just can’t stop repeating lies…
Has the U.S.-Mexico border been left completely open for anyone to cross?
No. And we’ve been here before.
In March, we rated False a claim that the border “is now open to anyone from anywhere in the world who wishes to enter our country.” In April, we rated False a claim that the U.S. is locked down and there’s “a wide open border.” And in July, we rated Mostly False a claim that Biden “is restricting travel for Americans into Mexico, but is keeping the border wide open for illegal aliens to walk right into our country.”
Here’s what is happening now.
Biden has continued a policy — initiated by former President Donald Trump — to restrict Americans’ travel to Mexico, as a way to fight the spread of COVID-19. On Nov. 26, after omicron was identified in South Africa, Biden banned travel from South Africa and seven other African countries.
Most people trying to cross at the border into the U.S. are being turned away, under a March 2020 order by the Trump administration to curb the spread of COVID-19. The Biden administration is still enforcing that policy, although it’s exempting children who arrive alone, as well as some families.
Encounters at the southern border rose each month since Biden took office through July, before dropping the next two months. The latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures show there were more than 1.7 million encounters during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30.
In September, the last month for which data was available, there were 192,001 encounters, 102,673 of which resulted in expulsion.
No policies have been changed that would make the borders more open, said Michelle Mittelstadt, spokesperson for the Migration Policy Institute.
The claim that the U.S.-Mexico border is completely open is False.
Comment sections I have made comments on today. I wonder how long they will stay up.
https://www.creators.com/read/gary-varvel
https://www.creators.com/read/a.f.-branco/02/22/319815
https://www.creators.com/read/tom-stiglich
https://www.creators.com/read/zack-hill
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And now some for fun
Daily cartoon / meme roundup: The workers do all the real work to make the profit while the upper incomes claim they are the job creators
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Scottie’s world today
A majority of the right wing comments are simply insults with no information, no credible sources, and no acceptance of reality. They some how think winning is to “own the libs with insults” like little kids on a school playground.
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For some reason when Macron went to talk to Putin over the issue of Ukraine they were seated at a table with like 20 feet between them.
The snow is all man made
https://twitter.com/MoiraDonegan/status/1491211439675113474?s=20&t=nW24iiq5d9eAFXiyy_2NJA
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
I did not think Rivers could sink any lower than he has been, but he surprised me with this one. I don’t post it for the message but to see how some right wing cult members see the world.
It’s a sad comic. President Biden really wants unity but the GOP has no wish to join the US of A. Got to give Joe credit for trying though.. His predecessor actively did and continues to divide the nation. Biden would love to have a unified government but you can not expect the Republicans to do anything to help the country because they think their chances of reelection come from denying Biden anything especially if it helps the public.
So true. The misleading right wing media arm of the Republican party can not stand to have Biden credited with anything. They are all about obstruction and misinformation to try to get Republicans elected to office.
Really asinine. Non-citizens can not vote! It takes years. In general, a non-citizen must spend at least 5 years as a lawful permanent resident to be eligible for naturalization while a spouse of a U.S. citizen must spend at least 3 years as a lawful permanent resident3. The median years spent as an LPR for all citizens naturalized in FY 2020 was 7.1 years. To think this is the Democrats plan you give Democrats far to much credit for future planning.
The cartoonist is way off base, no one I knows says it is OK for Democrats to use the N-word. I think this is in anger over Republicans being called on the carpet for using that word. Having said that I have an issue with “bad words”. I really don’t think there are any words that should be outlawed. I understand that words can hurt and wound. I have some words that make me cringe and Ron has words he doesn’t like me to use. But words only have the meanings we give them, and it is the same with the power words have. Their power comes from us. By making the word referred to by its initial makes it more powerful than it ever should be. It is not like a person doesn’t know what the N-word means so is their a difference between using the word or using the n-word to mean the same thing.
Complete lie and misdirection. The crime has risen in cities and states with both Republican and Democratic leadership. Plus crime is still lower than it has been in the last decade. It is expected to decline as the country returns to non-pandemic conditions. What prosecutors are doing is not prosecuting non-violent crime with lower dollar values so that they can use more programs designed to rehabilitate people and not feed the school to prison for profit pipelines. They are not prosecuting low level drug crimes such as possession when so many states have legalized cannabis. The sad fact is there is profit in incarcerating a lot of people in the country, there is a political reason to incarcerate black people and take away their voting rights. There is an attempt to stop any reforms to the justice system and prosecutions in the US. Again this cartoon is misdirection and misinformation.
No police forces have been defunded, most have seen budget increases. However the Republicans did vote against more money for the police. Yes the Republicans did vote no to police getting more money! The Build Back Better bill had money for police departments all across the US and Republicans killed it. Not one Republican voted for it. So save your pious fake tears.
This is BS. Trying to explain science to science deniers is a waste of time. The world is not flat. The world is way more than 6000 years old. The Bible is fiction, not canon. Vaccines work. Masks protect the wearer and the people around the wearer when worn properly.
If it weren’t for 1/2 the population wearing masks, this pandemic would be far worse…
If 100% of the population wore masks, we would not be so deep into this pandemic NOW!
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And now some for fun
On the above, Ron and I tell each other when we are going to go for a nap so the other can join in. But we have only been together 32 years.
Scottie's Playtime 
What we are witnessing is PRICE GOUGING, NOT INFLATION.
INFLATION is when business owners raise prices commensurate with higher costs to make ends meet.
But when corporations are reporting record all-time profits, raising prices is NOT INFLATION, it is PRICE GOUGING to capitalize on supply chain disruptions caused by a national emergency.
McDonald’s profits soared 59% in 2021, to $7.5 billion.
ExxonMobil reported a $8.9 billion in profits in the FOURTH QUARTER ALONE, while it was jacking up prices to new records.
Numerous other companies jacked up prices while raking in record profits in 2021.
Donald Trump crashed the economy, destroyed the supply chain, blew up international trade relations by imposing ridiculous tariffs that hurt farmers and consumers, mishandled a pandemic that exploded into a worldwide economic crisis and now as Biden is putting people back, restoring consumer confidence, which stimulates demand, but the devastation wrought by Trump on the supply chain is taking longer to undo, especially as anti-science right wing nut jobs continue to undermine recovery from the Trump plague.
If there were a hurricane, tornado, flood or wildfire and vendors were charging $20 for a bottle of water, they would be arrested. We need to see some of the corporate heads who have tripled their profits on the backs of consumers being frog-marched into the Big House.