Ron just went and picked up his one month prescription of JARDIANCE . It cost him $522.00 because our insurance has a 420 dollar co-pay before they kick in. In two weeks I have to do the same. another $522.00 for a 30 day supply of medications. We can not afford a $1044.00 hit in one month just for one medication each on our fixed incomes. The drug companies are making record profits, the insurance companies are making record profits, all the costs are going up while the incomes are stagnate or going down as inflation rises. The people need help. The country is run by the wealthy and large corporations and they are sucking the very life out of the public. This is worse than any vampire movie. They are draining the country of its vitality, and the people of any resources to live. Scottie
Assuming this 14% holds across the whole Kroger workforce, that's around 65,000 people working at the fourth-largest private employer in the US — ranked 17th on the Fortune 500 — who've been homeless while keeping the country's grocery stores running, in a pandemic. https://t.co/9RWLYvduap
The painful truth. Concentrated wealth and power are tremendously unhealthy.
Kill the filibuster. Kill the legacy of white supremacy.
Kill the filibuster.
Projection. Every GOP accusation is an admission of guilt.
“As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.”
Get them all under oath. Then send them to prison for treason.
If you are a Republican who cares about the Constitution, you should be outraged. #Arizona
These are forged documents used by Trump cronies, yet they will lie and say Biden stole the election. This is just disgraceful.
Ted Cruz is trying to blame the FBI for J6 when Trump was President on Jan 6.
[Ray Epps is Arizona Oath Keeper chapter president and massive Trump supporter.]
the fakes make up news
FOX has ratings based on predetermined narratives. Their hosts do one thing and say another, just to create resentment and fear.
Republicans attack the messenger. They have no policy insights or actual ideas.
My favorite Tony Fauci is the one who’s had it with Rand Paul’s bullshit.
Although studies claim Omicron to be mild, there is no plausible reason to think that the highly-transmissible variant will not cause long Covid conditions among survivors. Though much remains unknown about omicron, experts say the variant could lead to long Covid, even with a mild case. Patients with long-term symptoms can experience crushing fatigue, irregular heart rhythms and other issues months after their initial Covid infection. The highly infectious Omicron coronavirus variant causes less severe disease than the Delta strain but it remains a “dangerous virus”, particularly for those who are unvaccinated, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. Scottie
Anti-transgender attitudes have long made bathrooms a dangerous place for trans men and women — a problem only made worse by the latest round of bathroom hysteria. But other women are also getting swept up by anti-trans discrimination, as bathrooms turn into places of harassment for anyone who doesn’t conform to rigid views of gender.
In a recent case that went viral, a cisgender (non-trans) woman was insulted while in a Walmart bathroom after another woman confused her for a trans woman, apparently because of her short hair. The incident, the woman said, led her to confront the kind of harassment and discrimination that trans people have faced in bathrooms for a long time.
That the current hysteria over bathrooms is leading to women, trans or not, getting harassed in bathrooms is, on top of plain awful, ironic. After all, harassment is one of the things those who oppose letting trans people use the bathroom for their gender identity supposedly want to prevent. They claim trans-friendly policies will allow men to disguise themselves as women, go into women’s bathrooms, and harass or assault women.
The claim is a myth: Multiple investigations have found states and schools that have had legal protections for trans people for years have never linked an instance of sexual assault or harassment in a bathroom to trans-friendly policies. (The only bathroom harassment historically related to trans people, in fact, seems to be harassment and discrimination against trans people.)
But it does seem like the bathroom hysteria is leading to some women getting harassed — not in the way opponents of trans rights worry about, but more along the lines of the discrimination and harassment trans people have faced for a long time while trying to use the bathroom. Here are a few examples.
Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”
After momentary confusion, she realized that the woman next to her thought — because of her pixie-style haircut and baseball cap — that she was transgender.
Toms, a 22-year-old from Naugatuck who works at a retail store in the Bethel-Danbury retail area around Walmart, posted a video “rant” about her experience on Facebook Friday that had been viewed more than 12,000 times by Sunday evening.
“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”
Case in point: the man who, um, heroically barged into a women’s restroom at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco on Thursday to make sure that Jessica Rush, who manages a local health-food takeout place, was peeing in the proper place.
She was, for the record, and her situation isn’t particularly complicated. Rush was born and identifies as female and has no plans to change that. “I look very much like a girl,” she says. “I’m not trying to transition, nothing like that.”
But Rush wears her hair in a bleached blond fauxhawk and dresses androgynously. On Thursday, she was wearing a T-shirt from her alma mater, Texas Tech, with basketball shorts. As the man at Baylor explained after walking into the restroom behind her, it’s all very confusing. …
“When I saw you enter I thought you was…” the man says.
“A boy?” Rush offers.
“Yeah, it was kind of confusing.” Certainly she can see why. “You dress like a man,” he says several times as he walks away.
In the video, the unnamed woman tries to convince the two male officers and one female officer present that she is a woman, her friends shout in her support “she’s a girl”, which the officers ignore.
The police then ask the woman for identification to prove her sex. She rejects their demand, offended. The male officers then manhandle her out of the restroom, whilst calling her “sir”.
The police eventually tell the woman’s friends, who are still vouching for her female identity, “you can all leave if you want”.
Trans women and men have faced harassment and violence in bathrooms for a long time
Back in 2011, Chrissy Lee Polis captured national attention when teenagers attacked her after she used an empty women’s bathroom at a McDonald’s in Maryland. The Baltimore Sun reported:
There was a time when it seemed people from all over the country were talking about the 24-year-old. Many wanted to help her; others condemned her.
Polis became an unwitting symbol of the transgender community and the struggle for transgender rights when she stepped into a Rosedale McDonald’s one April evening. Two teen girls beat her that night. When an employee caught the assault on his cell phone, the video went viral, making headlines nationwide.
In a more recent case, in May, a security guard at a Washington, DC, grocery store allegedly pushed a trans woman out of the business after she tried to use a bathroom. The guard was later charged with simple assault. NBC4 Washington reported:
Ebony Belcher, 32, said she went to the Giant in northeast D.C. with a friend to pick up a delivery from the Western Union.
While at the Giant, she asked a store employee to point her to the restroom and passed a female security officer standing in the hallway.
The officer came into the restroom and told her to get out, according to Belcher.
“She opened the door and came in and started calling me derogatory names,” Belcher said.
She said the officer put her hand on her shoulder and arm, grabbed her and pushed her out of the store.
These are just two examples of the discrimination trans people face in bathrooms on a regular basis.
A 2013 survey published by the Williams Institute, for example, found that 70 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents in the Washington, DC, area faced a negative reaction while trying to use a public bathroom, including 9 percent who reported physical assault. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 26 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents across the country reported denial of access to gender-appropriate bathrooms in educational settings, and 22 percent faced such denial in the workplace.
The same surveys also show that trans people face a lot of discrimination, harassment, and violence more broadly — at home, work, and school. So the harassment cisgender women are now dealing with in bathrooms is just a small sample of the discrimination that has plagued the trans community for years and years.
Understand this is entirely about if someone thinks you look as they think a woman should look. Are you feminine enough to satisfy them? They demand others conform to their standards of male and female. It’s part of an entitlement feeling when someone can demand to know person’s genitals, their private body parts. What a weird violation of culture norms now excepted is that a person has the right to demand to know or verify someone else’s covered private reproductive organs. How is that not a sexual offence? Scottie
My spine shots were Monday. Yesterday and today my blood sugars are uncontrolled no matter how I try to control my food intake to minimize sugar intake. I have been trying to not sleep all the time. My blood sugar at 4 PM was 400. The doctor says that steroids keep the medications from removing the excess sugar from my system. If it stays high for a couple more days then I will go on insulin. In the meanwhile I will be struggling to think and to stay awake. The roundup may be late or missed entirely. Scottie
I repeat: The filibuster isn't in the Constitution. Arguably, it's unconstitutional. The Framers did not allow a minority of Senators to obstruct the majority. https://t.co/d1UW5rdL1c
Biden points out that 16 *current* Republican Senators voted to approve the last voting rights act and questions why so many of them seem to have lost their voices now.
Let’s get one thing straight: The changes in voting laws by Republican state legislatures aren't a response to voter fraud (which is non-existent) but to voter turnout (which they want to suppress).
My 12-year-old had appendicitis. The ER was overwhelmed with unvaccinated Covid patients and we had to wait 6+ hours. While waiting, his appendix ruptured and had to spend 5 days in hospital; just got hmo bill of $5000. So yeah, your decision to not vaccinate does affect others.
this is such an important point. the people who dismiss police killings of unarmed Black people as statistically insignificant ignore the fact that police abuse is a continuum of behavior. few people get shot, yes. but many do get hassled, harassed, pushed around, even beaten. https://t.co/DMoC2qvzfU
Quick anecdote about the trans bathroom moral panic: I used to look like the pictures below (very cool).70% of the time I’d pass as a guy depending on what clothes I was wearing. One time I was in Queens at a dive bar waiting to take a piss in the women’s bathroom and a woman 1/3 pic.twitter.com/dkhXK7fuUQ
accosted me. Screamed at me and grabbed me by the shoulder because I was allegedly a trans predator in the woman’s restroom. This scared me and I was also pissed the fuck off. Needless to say we had words and I was so shook up by the whole thing I left the bar. 2/3
You transphobic feminists think you’re all out here saving women but you’re hurting women, trans and cis. You’re actively making the world more unsafe for us and I fucking resent you for it! 3/3
I am once again reminded of the 1995 Alison Bechdel comic. People really have been gatekeeping bathrooms and not being feminine enough for what feels like forever pic.twitter.com/9SBs1CzLWu
— ?Jowmuni¿ | BLM – Defund the Police (@noj4888) January 12, 2022
I’ve literally saw this same scenario in a restaurant in Alabama. A butch woman was accosted for being trans in the women’s room. She wasn’t trans. This nonsense is another arm of patriarchy and it even affects little girls playing sports. This is harming all women.
Every medical expert in the field of Virology and immunology agreed this was not a gain of function that the US had anything to do with. The US / NIH did not fund a gain of function on a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Rand Paul not only doesn’t have the medical qualifications to understand / address this issue, he has misrepresented it for political gain and profit. Every time he attacks Dr. Fauci he turns out a fund raising pitch and it works for him. All he is doing is trying to enrage his voting base. Just because I can do basic cooking doesn’t make me a chief nor a chemist. Scottie
Oh my great dogs, the stupidity of this cartoon plus the complete antisemitism to it is stunning. The right blames everything they don’t like as being paid for by George Soros. He is their big boogieman. Even as a billionaire there is no way he could pay for all the things the right claims he is paying for. What is the issue with the DA’s? Well both right wing and left wing DA’s have decided to implement reforms that have been in the works for years. They changes / improvements are needed because courts are over loaded, the DA’s are over worked, the prison system is crashing with over population all because many non-violent crimes were being prosecuted with long harsh prison sentences. Things that are not really crimes are being treated as civil tickets instead of major crimes. Others are not being prosecuted at all such as possession of minor amounts of cannabis. These are common sense changes the right wing media rails against because it curbs racism abuses and lowers the for profit prison slave system. The right insists they need to make a profit of the bodies of the poor and helpless. Other things these reforms do is fund the placing of the mentally ill in other treatment than simply jailing them. Scottie
He has no use for the Law Enforcement people who died later. One from a stroke due to injuries and others who killed themselves over it!! But hey Henry is only pro life if you are a few cells old. Five people died as a result of Jan. 6, not counting the four officers who subsequently died by suicide. I think we all know we were lucky the number wasn’t higher.
Our democratic republic almost died that day and was prevented from happening with a single bullet. If the traitor Ashley Babbitt made it through the broken window and dozens of her fellow traitors followed, what would have happened to the congress members down the hall.
The vaccines and boosters allow the ones who catch any of the Covid virus and its variants from getting so ill they need hospitalization and nursing care. Hospitals all over the country are overwhelmed and red state governors are begging Biden for medical personal from the military because of the overwhelming numbers unvaxxed . The healthcare system in the US is failing, crashing. People with other than Covid needs are dying because of lack of beds for them because hospital beds are full of ill anti-vaxxers. This is not about some mythical freedom or control of people lives talking points. It is about very real consequences of people’s behavior in not getting vaccinated that harms others in many ways including causing death to other people and causing economic problems country wide. Scottie
The Justice Department is forming a new domestic terrorism unit to help combat a threat that has intensified dramatically in recent years, a top national security official said Tuesday.
Matthew G. Olsen, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, announced the unit in his opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting that the number of FBI investigations of suspected domestic violent extremists — those accused of planning or committing crimes in the name of domestic political goals — had more than doubled since the spring of 2020.
Olsen said the Justice Department already had counterterrorism attorneys who worked both domestic and international cases, and that the new unit would “augment our existing approach” to prosecuting those cases.
Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) addresses reporters during a press conference on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 following the closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting.
The fourth-ranking House Democrat, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (Mass.), urged the sergeant-at-arms on Tuesday to force lawmakers who defy the chamber’s mask mandate to cast votes from enclosures in the gallery above to limit potential spread of COVID-19.
Clark said it’s clear that existing fines are not enough to deter certain lawmakers from repeatedly flouting rules requiring everyone to wear masks in the House chamber.
Two far-right Republicans, Georgia Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andrew Clyde, have each been fined tens of thousands of dollars for repeatedly ignoring the requirement that everyone in the House chamber wear a mask during the pandemic.
And with the highly contagious omicron variant driving caseloads in the nation’s capital to record levels, Clark argued that pandemic safety rules need to be enforced.
She suggested using plexiglass enclosures in the gallery overlooking the House chamber, which were installed last year so that lawmakers subject to quarantine could still cast votes when proxy voting was temporarily unavailable.
“This callous disregard for House rules endangers the health of members of Congress and the professional staff whose physical presence is required to ensure continuity of government,” Clark wrote in the letter to House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker.
“That is why, in addition to imposing fines, I am requesting that your office begin requiring members who fail to comply with this rule to attend the House floor from the isolation boxes in the House gallery,” Clark wrote.
“This commonsense step will not only protect our dedicated House staff from members who refuse to follow House rules, but it will also allow those members to continue to fulfill their constitutional duty to vote on matters before the House.”
The House mask mandate was first established in July 2020 because numerous GOP lawmakers refused to wear masks, including one who tested positive for COVID-19 after spending time in the chamber and at committee hearings.
The mask requirement applies to the House chamber, surrounding hallways in the Capitol and connected office buildings. The Senate side of the Capitol complex, meanwhile, does not have a mask mandate.
Walker testified before members of the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that he’s had difficulty enforcing the mask mandate.
“I see people – members, staff – without masks. And I’ll walk up to them and I’ll ask them to put the mask on. And some just walk away from me. Some put it on,” Walker said.
House Democrats imposed fines to enforce the mask requirement shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in response to several Republicans who declined to wear masks while lawmakers were crowded in a secure space together during the riot. The fines start at $500 for the first offense and $2,500 for subsequent offenses.
Most Republicans have complied with the mask requirement in the House chamber to avoid the fines. But other GOP lawmakers and their staff have pointedly ignored the mask mandate everywhere else in the Capitol complex where they aren’t subject to fines.
And the fines haven’t deterred a handful of GOP lawmakers from refusing to wear masks altogether.
Greene told Newsmax last week that she has been fined close to $90,000 for repeatedly refusing to wear a mask on the House floor. Clyde, meanwhile, has accrued at least $58,000 in mask fines.
Nine other Republicans have also been fined at least once: Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), Bob Good (Va.), Mary Miller (Ill.), Chip Roy (Texas), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Brian Mast (Fla.), Beth Van Duyne (Texas) and Thomas Massie (Ky.).
House leaders, in consultation with the Capitol physician, are urging everyone to use higher-quality masks like N95s or KN95s and spend as little time as possible on the floor during roll call votes.
At least nine House members have tested positive for COVID-19 since the weekend.
The Capitol physician’s office disclosed last week – before the House and Senate returned to session in recent days – that the rate of positive cases at its COVID-19 testing site has shot up from less than 1 percent to 13 percent.
The House sergeant-at-arms says some maskless lawmakers & staff ignore him even if he tells them personally to abide by the mask rules.
A member of House Dem leadership has an idea: Force maskless lawmakers to vote from "isolation boxes" instead.https://t.co/d0glELTeC4
God grant me the serenity to close all the tabs I'm never going to read The courage to read the open tabs that really ought to be read And the wisdom to know the difference
NEW: Republicans in Arizona and Michigan tried to send forged vote certifications declaring trump the winner to the National Archives. NARA refused to accept them. https://t.co/GVqqq5hwJe
Gym Jordan, who helped cover up the sexual assaults of his fellow wrestling coach, has plenty to hide.
Hillary Clinton testified for ELEVEN HOURS and never took the Fifth Amendment or refused to answer any questions because she really did have “nothing to hide.” At the end of her ordeal, the committee chair, Republican Trey Gowdy, a trained prosecutor, apparently unaware that the mic was still hot, confessed that “we got nothing.” He soon resigned his committee chairmanship and then resigned from the congress entirely and has essentially never been heard from again.
All the Republicans who waged years of witch hunts against Hillary, never once getting anything, are now taking the Fifth (probably drinking a few fifths, too), refusing to testify and doing everything possible to avoid questions that they know will prove how directly they were involved in election lies, election fraud and an armed violent attempted overthrow of the United States Capitol.
From Raw Story:
“To answer Jim Jordan, I would quote Jim Jordan from the views that he expressed in the final Benghazi report, where he said that all of the truth must come out,” said Raskin. “Everybody needs to testify, and nobody’s got the right to hide anything from Congress. So, I think he had it right then. Jim Jordan, more than anybody else, knows what dogged, aggressive investigation is about, even when he’s on a wild goose chase, he demands all the information he wants, and we’re not on that. We are on the central investigative mission certainly of this decade, if not this century, to get to the bottom of this terrible political crime that was incited and to a substantial extent organized by Donald Trump.”
Depends on if the state is red or blue. In the blue states you have a chance for a good result out of the state legislatures, red state ones then you are screwed and your rights denied. Scottie
The slumlord who owned the building that burned in the deadliest residential blaze in New York City’s recent history is on Eric Adams‘ transition team for HOUSING ISSUES. https://t.co/HYkLOuyrf2
A caravan of over a dozen private vehicles with taped-over license plates pulls up, the Patriot Front members load up their shields and flags outside Soldier Field here in Chicago pic.twitter.com/JYUl1RDOps
At least they were not abusing and killing unarmed black men. But for that they wouldn’t have been fired. Scottie
Sorry too late then. Scottie
The unvaxxed clogging our hospitals , expecting the overworked staff to cure them strain sympathies. When they recover, will they still support anti-vax pols? Morning newspaper white-space sketch. pic.twitter.com/3WvbBfKvlM
So the reason not to say "screw it, let's just unmask and go back to normal" right now is to try to….flatten the curve. I know that's an expression from way back when, but it applies. We need to slow down infections to keep hospitals from collapsing. 6/n
Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine announced today that CORBEVAX™, a protein sub-unit COVID-19 Vaccine, whose technology was created and engineered at its Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to launch in India with other underserved countries to follow.
Dubbed “The World’s COVID-19 Vaccine”, it uses a traditional recombinant protein-based technology that will enable its production at large scales making it widely accessible to inoculate the global population. The initial construct and production process of the vaccine antigen was developed at Texas Children’s Hospital CVD, led by co-directors Drs. Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez and in-licensed from BCM Ventures, Baylor College of Medicine’s integrated commercialization team, to Hyderabad-based vaccine and pharmaceutical company Biological E. Limited (BE).
I have debunked this right wing talking point before. Crime is up currently in cities run by both the right and the left, but the misleading right wing media is making it out to be a lot worse than it is and they leave out it is happening in cities run by the Republicans. The right wing uses talking points instead of facts. The crime we have now is less than we had just less than a decade ago. What the right is trying to do is scare the voters into voting for Republicans saying they will be harmed if they don’t and only Republicans can save them. It is a talking point they have used for as long as I can remember. They claim the Democrats are soft on crime and weak on the military. Both are incorrect. Scottie
Rivers is a die hard far right cartoonist. He doesn’t even see the hypocrisy of showing people that sacrificed and gave what they could for a public good he is then comparing to people who won’t even wear a mask to prevent a virus from spreading because it inconveniences them. Really the other suffered for the good of the country with extra work, rationed foods and fuel, not buying stuff to save it for the war effort and yet the people Rivers is championing won’t wear a mask because it seems to harm a mythical freedom they have the rest of us don’t. Scottie
Covered this one before. The CDC guidelines take into account the reality that the US doesn’t have the testing kits we need to do proper testing. The CDC guidelines are easy to understand if you wish to do so. If you listened to the misleading right wing the guidelines are written in a now dead language by space monkeys. It is a case of saying what you wish ere true instead of reporting the reality. Scottie
The US undervalues teachers and uses them as childcare baby sisters to park kids somewhere so the parents can go to work to make profit for the upper incomes. The New Mayor of NY even said it, he needs kids in schools so the parents can work when he was talking about wanting to stop testing for Covid. DeathSantis threatened teachers, schools, and districts if they dared to require masks or vaccines and worse if they tried to do remote learning. Deathsantis has made it clear he is denying Covid is in Florida because it is hurting the tourism trade and the profits wont flow if we admit the truth. Better to infect everyone they say and get it over with. Problem is it is not over with then. There is so far no herd immunity with the coronavirus which is shown as you can get it a second and even third time. Teachers are humans, people with families and they want to not get Covid also. They have the same right to protect themselves as everyone else. The fact that they stop the states from getting tax money and the upper class incomes from profit is the states problem. Pay for more teachers to spread the students out, enforce mask and vaccine requirements, and do remote learning when needed. But the states don’t want to spend more money on kids or teachers / schools, better to let them all die on their own dime the states feel. Scottie
One side, the Democrats are fighting for the people and the public good. The other side, the Republicans are fighting against the public good and for the wealthy / large corporations. It is very misleading of the media that tries to make this both sides are doing it. That is incorrect, each side is fighting for very different ideas and groups of people. Scottie
The main difference is that Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were foreign enemies. The perpetrators of January 6th were domestic enemies, traitors one and all. Scottie
Mail in ballots have been shown to be safe and secure way for people to vote. Several states use only mail in ballots with little problems and no fraud. Drop boxes are simply convenient for people who are busy especially with the slowed down mail system. Again no evidence of any fraud. The only large scale ballot harvesting fraud was in North Carolina where a Republican operative took a bunch of ballots to mark them for the Republican candidate. He got caught. The point is small scale fraud happens and the people get caught. Like the four people so far from the Villages in Florida who voted more than once for tRump. Ballot gathering or bunching is simply a convenience to help people who can not get out and post their ballot themselves. It is a service not a crime. What the right doesn’t like about the voting rights bill is it helps people who have a right to vote to vote. The right doesn’t want all eligible voters to vote because they will lose. But that is democracy, they need to change their message to appeal to more people. They do not seem to want a democracy, but instead to allow only the people who vote for them to vote.
The allowing non-citizens to vote in local communities where they have lived for many years makes sense. It gives people who live there a say in their community. Studies have shown that when people are part of the community they work for the well being of that community. This is not federal elections, not even state office holders, it is simply local community issues. No big deal and no down side. Scottie
Equating the ending of a 20 year war and the removing of US troops along with mostly peaceful protests against police abuse / murder of unarmed people to violent attacks against the country with thousands of deaths or the attack on the capital to stop a legislative action is despicable. The ones mentioned by VP Harris were attacks against the US sovereignty. That is a huge difference from the others added despite the right wing media hype over them. Scottie
I almost did not do the roundup today. I got up at 4:30 AM to get ready for my first in the morning doctors appointment. I got multiple shots into my spine. They give a numbing shot to the area, then quickly follow it up with the insertion of a catheter, and then come back and inject the substance into the vertebrae . My vertebrae are misshapen and destroyed. They grow in ways that catch or pinch my nerves. Some times they stretch the nerves and others they smash / pinch them. Each produces different sensations and pain levels. At one injection the pain was so bad that I nearly passed out. The doctor told me he had to inject the stuff right above the nerve causing it to have a lot of pressure so the signal it sent to the brain was intense to say the least.
I got home and Ron fed me a wonderful baked pasta dish he made and I went right to bed. Then hours later I got up and started the Roundup. I love it so much I really want to do it. But I have to do a bunch of legal paperwork in the next few days to get a bunch of stuff done so the roundup may be late or just skipped. Best wishes to everyone. Scottie
While the owners of Walmart, the wealthiest family in the country, became over $60 billion richer during the pandemic, they are now slashing the paid leave of their employees in half. Outrageous. We must end corporate greed and raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.
They demand government support and get it while the people suffer. We seen this oveer the last two years. Scottie
SCOTUS when the Trump administration unilaterally rewrites immigration law to keep out refugees: cool cool cool 😎
SCOTUS when the Biden administration relies on a textual delegation of authority to protect workers from the deadliest pandemic in American history: pic.twitter.com/Qq36EwHZka
This is due to gerrymandering / voter suppression laws , and big money in politics. Why listen to the voters is only your supporters can vote? Scottie
When you want to do something terrible, you make stuff up to rationalize it. Hillary gave a concession speech the morning after the election was called. Obama hosted Trump at the White House as president-elect two days later. If Trump did what they did, Jan. 6 doesn’t happen. https://t.co/BxUWpyXh5N
Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, actual devils, are calling out today’s Republican traitors.
Would love to hear Republicans denounce white supremacy. Out loud. On the record. On a regular basis. Same with their base.
White conservative terror wants to be regarded as the default.
If you want democracy, you want to expand voting rights.
A caravan of over a dozen private vehicles with taped-over license plates pulls up, the Patriot Front members load up their shields and flags outside Soldier Field here in Chicago pic.twitter.com/JYUl1RDOps
It is absolutely wild to me how many people legit think exposing an entire generation of kids to Covid is better than skipping a couple weeks of school.
We know long haul Covid is very harmful, we know some aspects of Covid in kids manifests after they seem to get better. What we don’t know is what the long term effects of Covid are on the brain / nervous system. If it causes you to lose taste and smell when sick, what does it do long term to your sensory nerves? Do we really want to take the chance with kids?
Situation still tenuous. He won the first case in court yet the Australian government has said they will appeal the ruling. Scottie
How many rude annoying people treat servers when they go out to eat. Scottie
It all starts with elections of representatives who decide policy and law. If the representative is owned by the 1%, then interests of working people are abandoned. USAunify.org
Iszac Henig, a (pre-t) trans man competing on the Yale team won several races and beat Lia Thomas. Cue conservative media only citing that Iszac is trans and all of social media assuming he's a trans woman and engaging in horrific transphobia while ironically affirming Iszac. pic.twitter.com/cj5vBKuBUd
School choice is a dog whistle, it is code for what the right really wants. Segregated schools paid for by the tax payer. They basically want schools that teach / preach their views paid for by the public. That was what most charter schools were, a disguised attempt to get around the public curriculum but being paid for by the public. Religious people want to be able to send their kids to private schools paid for by the taxpayer so kids can be indoctrinated into science denying bigots, the white supremacist want white only schools so their kids don’t have to mix with the non-whites they are taught to look down on, and the wealthy want you the public to pay for expensive great schools their kids get to attend so they wont have to associate with the general population they see as be low them. Scottie
Of course Republicans would prefer to quietly strangle your right to vote like a python than publicly tread on the topic. In the reality-reversed alternative universe Ramirez is writing from, he thinks allowing more people to vote more easily with equal access for all voters and all votes being counted with equal weight is treading on freedom? What Michael Ramirez wants to see is an election system in which white suburban and rural voters can get in and out of a convenient, nearby polling place in five minutes, while those in minority areas see most polling places closed until they have to drive very far and then wait in line for six or seven hours (with a prohibition on providing them with food or water) in order to vote, with the proviso that if the state legislature doesn’t like the outcome, it can throw out the results and install its own outcome.
Ramirez wants to return to the original voting standard as envisioned by the original founders: white male landowners are the only ones allowed to vote. He seems oblivious to the fact (or just doesn’t care about facts) that we have had twenty-seven amendments since then, each written by a new set of founders, that have equal weight to the original Constitution and which include many expansions of the right to vote to include all adult citizens age eighteen or over regardless of race, ethnicity, previous condition of servitude, gender and without undue burdens imposed.
Michael Ramirez demonstrates what Senator Raphael Warnock meant when he said, “Some people don’t want some people to vote.”Scottie
The CDC is an organization made up of skilled people with expertise / education to protect the people of the US for the viruses and diseases that threaten the public. That is their jobs and they do it well. They give the White House their best advice and suggestions. As we seen in the last administration the White House can ignore their advice if the president wishes to do so. Scottie
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 took more American lives than the January 6 attempted coup so, in that sense, were greater tragedies.
But Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were attacks by FOREIGN agents.
January 6 was an act of treason perpetrated by a sitting president to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power after HE LOST AN ELECTION BY MORE THAN SEVEN MILLION VOTES.
January 6 was an act of terroristic treason COMMITTED BY AMERICANS, not foreigners.
January 6 was the first time the U.S. CAPITOL had been taken over by hostile forces since the War of 1812. Not even during the Civil War did the Capitol get taken over; the KKKonfederate flag was never raised inside the U.S. Capitol until January 6.
January 6 was the first time ever that the Constitutional electoral role of certifying a presidential election was disrupted by force.
After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, you didn’t have 30-40% of the population SUPPORTING THE FOREIGN ATTACKERS.
Comparing January 6 and Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is like comparing an orange with a bushel of apples. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were FOREIGN attacks that caused more loss of life but united our country. January 6 caused fewer deaths but further divided our country.
ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS, MINIMIZES OR RATIONALIZES THE TRAITOROUS, TERRORISTIC ATTEMPTED COUP is a traitor.
The U.S. Constitution provides two possible definitions of treason: either giving aid or comfort to the enemy (with enemy defined in legal decisions to mean as an adversarial combatant in a declared war), which clearly does not apply, or being in open rebellion against the United States government, which applied for those who waged violent rebellion against the United States during the Civil War and reasonably applies to what happened on January 6.
A violent, armed insurrection against the United States Capitol for the purpose of stopping the congress from completing a CONSTITUTIONALLY-MANDATED PRO-FORMA DUTY in order to OVERTHROW A LAWFUL ELECTION is clearly an act of open rebellion against the United States.
Much evidence has already been made public and much evidence will be revealed in the days to come as more serious charges are filed.
And we all watched on television as an ARMED MOB of Trump insurrectionists, in response to directions from the president in a carefully-planned military maneuver including printed T-shirts equating themselves to July 4, 1776, invaded the U.S. Capitol and forcibly disrupted a CONSTITUTIONALLY-MANDATED pro-forma session to complete a federal election. They came armed, including weapons of various sorts (including some firearms, we now know), and including zip ties, wall climbing equipment, wearing bulletproof vests, and many other indications of a well-planned insurrection.
Whether or not the Justice Department decides to file charges of treason, the actions that have been charged and proved so far, with more to come, clearly rise to the Constitutional definition.
All those who defend, rationalize, minimize or excuse these acts of violent rebellion against the United States are complicit after the fact in the treason.
Seems to me the places having less of a problem getting and keeping restaurant workers are the ones ditching tips and paying more. Sure, they’ve raised their prices, but adjusted for not tipping, it comes out as a push for the customer. Aw, whose a good boy?! Works for leftovers. The dog, but not the previous waiter. Scottie
Why not use empty buildings / apartments to house the homeless. it is win win for the landlords, the homeless, and the government. In places were this has been done it has found to be cheaper than locking up the homeless or other ways to deal with them. Scottie
More than 760 kids under the age of 18 are getting hospitalized with COVID-19 on average each day, according to CDC data. It’s the highest average ever reported for the age group.
“”For the week ending December 30, 2021, more than 325,000 cases were reported among children—a 64 percent increase from the previous week and nearly double the cases from two weeks prior,” says Dr. Noah Greenspan, PT, DPT, a cardiopulmonary physical therapist and the director of Pulmonary Wellness ComplexPT, who has been treating COVID patients since the beginning of the pandemic.”
Normally I would put this anti-CDC stuff in the misleading right wing media section, but the recent guidelines that changed several times a day for several days due to lack of tests for the Coronavirus variants and people needing to work to survive. So this time he has a point. While the recommendations have changed rapidly recently the CDC has to take into account reality when they issue their guidelines. Their job is to recommend the best public health measures to take to best protect the people from a public health threat. The reality is the US doesn’t currently have enough tests for people to test and quarantine then test again until they are negative for Coronavirus as they were doing, and people also need to work to survive in the US so have to be able to go back to work with out a negative test. While the CDC guidelines are not the optimum they are the best considering the circumstances. Scottie
Twelve people were killed Wednesday when gunmen stormed a French satirical news magazine, a weekly publication called Charlie Hebdo, which has published cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Scottie
As January 6th was an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, an attempted coup, an insurrection designed to deny the will of the people who voted to elect Biden president in a fair and valid election, yes it was much worse. The attack and deaths of 9/11 couldn’t destroy the US nor stop the government from functioning. Jan 6th did stop the government from functioning and could have destroyed / ended the US form of democratic government by force. Scottie
“The general public and the politicians who serve them, like me, tend to reflexively support punitive sentencing measures that often fail to promote public safety and result in needless deprivation of freedom, burdensome taxpayer cost and unimaginable racial and regional disparities,” Mariani said. Supporters of the change contend it would help promote rehabilitation and save taxpayer money by freeing up prison space.
DFL Gov. Tim Walz shared some thoughts on the proposal earlier this week, saying he thinks the commission will make sure the most violent criminals remain locked up.
“Trying to tell Minnesotans that this is somehow going to make them less safe is simply not true,” Walz said. “The sentencing commission is made up of a vast swath of expertise. So, I would expect them to make the right decision on that, to be smart about what it takes for Minnesota to keep Minnesotans safe.“ Scottie
Scottie's Playtime 
Gym Jordan, who helped cover up the sexual assaults of his fellow wrestling coach, has plenty to hide.
Hillary Clinton testified for ELEVEN HOURS and never took the Fifth Amendment or refused to answer any questions because she really did have “nothing to hide.” At the end of her ordeal, the committee chair, Republican Trey Gowdy, a trained prosecutor, apparently unaware that the mic was still hot, confessed that “we got nothing.” He soon resigned his committee chairmanship and then resigned from the congress entirely and has essentially never been heard from again.
All the Republicans who waged years of witch hunts against Hillary, never once getting anything, are now taking the Fifth (probably drinking a few fifths, too), refusing to testify and doing everything possible to avoid questions that they know will prove how directly they were involved in election lies, election fraud and an armed violent attempted overthrow of the United States Capitol.
From Raw Story:
“To answer Jim Jordan, I would quote Jim Jordan from the views that he expressed in the final Benghazi report, where he said that all of the truth must come out,” said Raskin. “Everybody needs to testify, and nobody’s got the right to hide anything from Congress. So, I think he had it right then. Jim Jordan, more than anybody else, knows what dogged, aggressive investigation is about, even when he’s on a wild goose chase, he demands all the information he wants, and we’re not on that. We are on the central investigative mission certainly of this decade, if not this century, to get to the bottom of this terrible political crime that was incited and to a substantial extent organized by Donald Trump.”