Lollapalooza

The Big Lie: The Pillow Putz’ South Dakota cyber symposium where he promised he would reveal proof that the election had been stolen from the FG went off about as well as expected by everyone not named Mike Lindell.  No proof to share as even the Pillow man’s chief cyber expert refused to say he had anything to show, but given Lindell’s insanity and aberrant behavior someone should check to see if he’s back on crack.  The results of the 2020 Census, particularly the part about the white population of the US shrinking for the first time since 1790 and now under 60% combined with the under 18 portion of the population now being 52.7% people of color goes far towards explaining the Republican party’s efforts to suppress votes, something they’ll probably succeed at doing in the near term but, assuming Tucker Carlson’s preferred autocracy government doesn’t come to pass,  will fail at in the long run given the country’s changing faster than expected demographics.  Getting back to the 2020 election and the FGs efforts to get Biden’s Georgia victory tossed out, the mystery behind the sudden exit of Byung Pak the former US Attorney for Georgia who resigned rather suddenly in early January has now been revealed.  As suspected at the time, Pak left his position after being told that he was about to be fired for refusing to succumb to the FG’s pressure to say that the Georgia results were riddled with voter fraud.  While it’s good that Pak refused to lie about  the election results to placate the FG and also good that he showed up and revealed his experience during this week’s Senate Judiciary committee testimony, he doesn’t deserve any accolades as he didn’t have the courage to announce the reason for his resignation back in January when it could have been impactful.  As to misbehaving Republicans, it turns out that that Matt Gaetz isn’t the only one with sex trafficking problems, Republican strategist and sometime Fox guest Anton Lazarro was indicted on five counts of underage sex trafficking yesterday.  Speaking about Gaetz, he’s still free and out doing his thing which is astonishing given the thousands of texts and cash transaction records that his alleged partner in sex and drugs, one time Seminole County official Joel Greenberg has shared with investigators.  Some of those texts, many of which are now in the public domain, include pictures of Gaetz while documenting how Greenberg made arrangement for some drug fueled encounters for the two of them with a few “paid” dates.  Think about it, New York’s governor is out due to his bad behavior, none of which involved minors or drugs, while Gaetz remains a Congressman with all his Judiciary committee assignment intact.   

Viral Musings:  The FDA made it official early this morning, immune compromised individuals with certain as yet clearly defined underlying conditions are now eligible for Pfizer and Moderna booster shots.  That was previewed yesterday during another a bit too jumbled coronavirus press conferences. The Biden team deserves a lot of credit for basing their recommendations on science but really needs to work on message delivery.  The FG was batsh-t crazy when he told us to go the Lysoltini route but was more masterful as he pushed his lethal cures.  Probably because the actual procedures for how to get those shots will be finalized at the state level, it’s still unclear how those shots can be obtained but the details will probably begin to shake out today.  In any case the US has more than enough doses to provide those booster jabs.  In fact we have or will have enough boosters to provide shots to all of us if, or more likely when, the decision is formally made that the rest of us need one.  As to the durability of the shots we’ve gotten, it appears that Moderna’s may be holding up marginally better than Pfizer’s.  Sadly, though a lot of people will heed the call to line up for a boost, far too many eligible individuals continue to refuse to get jabbed and so the Delta variant and its potential followers continues to spread like crazy among many of the same people who think that mask wearing is a sign of devil worship.  On a positive note, the Supreme Court is okay with universities mandating vaccines for returning students.  Yesterday, Amy Coney Barrett, the designated Justice for Indiana, refused to block the University of  Indiana’s vaccine mandate. The Indiana mandate provides outs for religious objections which is probably all she cared about but her action bodes well for other mandates. As to vaccinations, as shown by the recently held Chicago Lollapalooza, vaccinations really do work. Despite fears that the event would be a virus super spreader, the results are in and with 90% of the attendees vaccinated it wasn’t.  On the face masks in school front, Florida’s Governor DeSantis, who for some inexplicable reason seems to think that killing children and teachers will help him in the long run, has backed down from threats that he’ll dock school superintendents and principals who mandate masking.  He’s still going to cause them trouble but probably because he can’t he won’t screw them out of their pay for putting their student’s lives first.  By comparison there were about 21,000 new COVID cases and 357 deaths in Florida yesterday and about 2400 cases and 18 deaths in New York State. To put that in perspective Florida’s population is 21.48 million, New York’s at 19.45 million is only a little less, hardly enough to justify the difference.    

138,595 new US cases yesterday

1022 US deaths