“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
Apparently, that's true.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_...cause_of_death
Medical examiner found no blunt force trauma. Sicknick died from 2 strokes. January 6th played a role role in his condition, and no one has been charged with causing his death.
Trump gives FOX News interview, saying Biden's performance with Putin was weak and announcing plans to visit the border.
"Does this carry weight?"
I'd say pushing 300 pounds.
"Does this carry effective legal weight?"
No. FOX News found a story where Trump wasn't just yelling "FRAUD FRAUD FRAUD" and breathed a sigh of relief. While Biden didn't get results...strike that, Biden got diplomats re-instated and threatened Putin in full view of seven billion people -- Biden's performance was already decided by Trump's rabid fanbase to be weak and ineffective before it started. And Trump visiting the border is basically an excuse to get better taco bowls.
Meanwhile, the Georgia thing picked up some chatter recently. Not because yet another another another investigation found no fraud, although that's still worth noting. I have some quotes from that report:
Whoa! That can't be right! Let's try again.You and your family will be killed very slowly
Oh shit, you know what I did? I accidentally quoted from this article titled Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers and those were death threats sent by Trump supporters to Georgia election officials.We plan for the death of you and your family every day
I'd like to take this opportunity to remind everyone what the definition of "terrorism" is. And then, remind everyone this is Trump's voter base in action.Those messages, which have not been previously reported, illustrate the continuing barrage of threats and intimidation against election officials and their families months after former U.S. President Donald Trump’s November election defeat. While reports of threats against Georgia officials emerged in the heated weeks after the voting, Reuters interviews with more than a dozen election workers and top officials – and a review of disturbing texts, voicemails and emails that they and their families received – reveal the previously hidden breadth and severity of the menacing tactics.
Trump’s relentless false claims that the vote was “rigged” against him sparked a campaign to terrorize election officials nationwide – from senior officials such as Raffensperger to the lowest-level local election workers. The intimidation has been particularly severe in Georgia, where Raffensperger and other Republican election officials refuted Trump’s stolen-election claims. The ongoing harassment could have far-reaching implications for future elections by making the already difficult task of recruiting staff and poll workers much harder, election officials say.
In an exclusive interview, Tricia Raffensperger spoke publicly for the first time about the threats of violence to her family and shared the menacing text messages with Reuters.
The Raffenspergers – Tricia, 65, and Brad, 66 – began receiving death threats almost immediately after Trump’s surprise loss in Georgia, long a Republican bastion. Tricia Raffensperger started taking precautions. She canceled regular weekly visits in her home with two grandchildren, ages 3 and 5 – the children of her eldest son, Brenton, who died from a drug overdose in 2018.
“I couldn’t have them come to my house anymore,” she said. “You don’t know if these people are actually going to act on this stuff.”
Speaking of new information, we also know that Trump basically forced the Atlanta US Attorney to quit (he was thinking about it anyhow, possibly because Trump lost, possibly because of the aforementioned terroristic threats) when he refused to find fraud in Georgia.
Quick sidenote: Our Ruling is Pants on Fire.The Oversight Committee’s report on the documents said that was also the day that then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told Rosen to ask Clark to look into allegations that Fulton County had not properly enforced signature-matching laws for absentee ballots.
The next morning, Rosen asked Clark whether there was any follow-up. Clark’s response indicates that he may have been attempting to speak with Pak about an allegation made by Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani that there was video showing Fulton County elections workers tallying ballots pulled from suitcases.
"Well if no reason was given how do we know--"“I spoke to the source and am on with the guy who took the video right now,” Clark wrote that Saturday morning. “Working on it. More due diligence to do.”
Later that day, Trump had a phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. During the secretly recorded conversation, the president referred to a “Never Trumper U.S. attorney” while discussing the videos. Trump also urged Raffensperger to find enough votes needed to give him the win in Georgia over Biden.
Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue emailed Pak at 10:09 p.m. on the following Sunday night. “Please call ASAP,” the subject line said.
At 7:41 the next morning, Pak emailed Donoghue two resignation letters. One was addressed to Trump and the other to Rosen. He doesn’t provide a reason for stepping down in either letter.
"...yeah, but maybe it's unrelated. It's not like Pak left objective evidence he felt what was happening was wrong."The Wall Street Journal later reported that White House officials pressured Pak to resign because they did not feel he was pursuing voter fraud allegations aggressively enough.
The New York case, on which there are also developments, is not the only one Trump should fear. He left a string of evidence that he, and the voters that he intentionally cultivated, used threats from "I'll fire you and replace you if you don't find fraud" to "You and your family will die slowly". And it sounds like there's a growing number of high-level, credible witnesses and victims.Minutes after sending his resignation letter, Pak typed a separate email to the other 92 U.S. attorneys. In it, he expresses gratitude to colleagues who worked to make the country better and safer “even though we are facing unprecedented challenges.”
“I do wish and hope,” he continued, “that at least some of you will consider continuing to serve our country — our nation needs patriots like you to uphold the rule of law.”
What Trump did/is doing, is terorism. This is America. There is really only one response to terrorism in America. Trump needs to feel the full force of law for any crimes he's proven to have committed.
- - - Updated - - -
Well, there's a fine line between "above and beyond for dramatic effect" and "outright lying". Yeah, I'll stop saying that.
I wonder if coroner notes can say "literally scared to death"?
ACA remains Law of the Land!!!!!! Supreme Court rules 7-2 with a nice wink and a fuck you to republicans!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.healthcaredive.com/news/...-healt/599060/
House Republicans, with your repeal and replace rose garden celebration, sit on a fucking cactus ya fuckheads! Now let's ax the filibuster and Joe Biden can give his buddy Joe Lieberman the finger and give that public option! Regardless, huge wins for Tens of MILLIONS of Americans!!!!!!!!!!!
Last edited by beanman12345; 2021-06-17 at 02:51 PM.
Manchin isn't going to vote to remove the filibuster and while its good that the ACA survived this it still has an * next to it. They didn't rule on its constitutionality but decided Texas had no standing in bringing the lawsuit. (since the state itself isn't effected by the mandate, the citizens are).
I would not be surprised if this makes it way up courts again with a citizen 'victim' rather then the state.
It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death
I mean, if I was elected after running on repeal and replace, and I was given carte blanche to do so for two years with no obstacles of any kind, and still failed, I'd probably stop running on it, too.
Of course, now they are running on "repeal and replace the election".
Wednesday's report:
14,063 new cases; a little under 2k fewer than last Wednesday.
Top 5:
Fuck Florida (worldometers continues posting daily values for them this week and I still haven't figured out how they're getting them)
Texas: 1,194 new cases; 40 deaths
Missouri: 857 new cases; no deaths reported
California: 818 new cases; 19 deaths
New York: 525 new cases; 12 deaths
Missouri's cases appear to be heading up and it is, as expected, off the back of the Delta variant becoming more prevalent. Right now the outbreak is relatively small compared to numbers we've seen the past year, but as I keep annoyingly repeating the past few weeks it has the potential to cause a lot of problems for the nation if it keeps happening, particularly in those pockets where the vaccination rate is extremely low. Pockets like, I dunno, Alabama, at 30.8%. Or Texas at 38.7%. (These percentages represent fully vaccinated population as opposed to "at least one dose"; for comparison, Vermont is at 62.9%). Hospitalizations are increasing in Texas due to the Delta variant and it's likely that we'll see strained medical services across the nation even as the case counts continue to decline because the Delta variant is more likely to cause severe illness. It's easy to become complacent now that we might see sub-10k national numbers within a week or so, but it's not yet time to start celebrating.
434 deaths is a little under a hundred fewer than last Wednesday and brings the total to 616,150. Georgia, Florida and Texas top the list today, though Georgia is there largely due to their reporting scheme. Their average is low-20s.
Related news:
U.S. officials keep pushing for Covid vaccinations as more transmissible delta variant gains ground--I'm sure some of you are sick of hearing about it by now but this is too important to stop banging the drum. Last week Delta made up about 6% of cases in the US. This week it's 10%.
Biden administration to invest $3.2B for Covid-19 antiviral pills--Unlike the Trump SHITSHOW, Biden's administration is making plans for battling the virus long into the future--because it's not going to go away completely ever.
Stay safe, folks.Effective antiviral medicines could be taken at home, preventing surges in hospitalizations and leading to fewer deaths, the department said. The effort, which also will include research on other viruses with pandemic potential, will be funded by the American Rescue Plan, it said.
Man it's good seeing CA under 1K cases a day for a change.
I'm genuinely worried about the Delta variant though, from what I've read vaccines reduce the chance of infection but it's something like 6x less efficacious for Delta compared to other variants like the Alpha/Beta.
This shit is why I still wear my mask even if CA has "reopened", and will be continuing to do so for a while. Even if it doesn't afford me a ton of protection every little bit helps, and should I somehow get it and be asymptomatic I'd rather not share it with everyone I encounter.
1 shot is less effective against Delta. 2 shots is apparently still 90+% effective (for Pfizer, donno about the rest)
https://www.wsj.com/articles/vaccine...ws-11623690999
It ignores such insignificant forces as time, entropy, and death
If you are fully vaccinated you should be relatively safe, and even if you do happen to catch it your symptoms should be far more mild than if you were unvaccinated. I'm grateful to people like you who still try to be cautious, but you can rest a bit easier, at least.
In other related news, I'm finally going to be able to get my first jab tomorrow. The Netherlands has been really slow in their rollout.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/...-delta-variant
I was going off of this -
So it's not comprehensive since it didn't track the T cells apparently, but still gives me cause for concerns.A French study from the Pasteur Institute concluded that neutralising antibodies produced by vaccination with the Pfizer-BioNTech jab are three to six times less effective against the Delta variant than against the Alpha variant.
Although they represent an essential marker, the levels of antibodies measured in a lab are not enough to determine the efficacy of a vaccine. In particular, they do not take into account a second immune response in the form of killer T cells – which attack already-infected cells and not the virus itself.
IN OTHER NEWS - https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/...n-flag-burning
Senator Steve Daines has re-introduced a Constitutional Amendment to ban flag burning, which will go nowhere. However, he doesn't seem to understand or appreciate the irony of his commentary in his support of the Amendment -
Freedom, just not that kind of freedom, yaknow? Why do Republicans seem to so consistently be opposed to freedom off speech and expression?“The Stars and Stripes are a representation of freedom. We must always protect and respect the American flag,” he added.
I'm having some serious HW flashbacks.
Leaving the First Amendment aside, flag-burning, kneeling during the anthem, etc. are things conservatives bring up when they'd rather paint over the issue that leads to protests, by complaining that people are protesting in a way that actually gets attention. Which...protests are supposed to do.