This is astounding and infuriating:
A Hasidic synagogue in Brooklyn planned the wedding of a chief rabbi’s grandson with such secrecy it was able to host thousands of maskless celebrants without the city catching on.
Despite a surge in COVID-19 cases, guests crammed shoulder-to-shoulder inside the Yetev Lev temple in Williamsburg for the Nov. 8 nuptials — stomping, dancing and singing at the top of their lungs without a mask in sight, videos obtained by The Post show.
Organizers schemed to hide the wedding of Yoel Teitelbaum, grandson of Satmar Grand Rabbi Aaron Teitelman, from “the ravenous press and government officials,” says a detailed account in the Yiddish newspaper Der Blatt, the publication of the Satmar sect.
“Due to the ongoing situation with government restrictions, preparations were made secretly and discreetly, so as not to draw attention from strangers,” the paper reported in its Nov. 13 edition.
And they are PROUD of themselves. Seriously, fuck each and every single one of them, and I legit hope a bunch of them get sick and die. I am tired of being the bigger person, and these folks stay within their own community a good deal, so fuck them all.
There is only so much you can do to try to keep people safe.
MC
Conservatives are ultimately all the same.
Chief Oshkosh
“When it comes to BULLSHIT…BIG-TIME, MAJOR LEAGUE BULLSHIT… you have to stand IN AWE, IN AWE of the all time champion of false promises and exaggerated claims, religion.”
― George Carlin
featheredsprite
I hear you, John. That looks like a group auto-da-fe.
Nicole
@MC: Yeah.
hitchhiker
you know, I’m starting to think religion itself is the problem.
Gozer
What I don’t get about this is why?
The insularity of the community is in part a response to constant attempts of others to wipe them out. COVID has ravaged the Haredi community…why do this? Why knowingly engage in behavior likely to further the spread of something that has been killing off members of the community?
NotMax
The Satmars make the Amish look cosmopolitan.
trollhattan
Yeah, religion erases the sin of sociopathy, evidently. Just great.
So, get this. One of California’s biggest superspread event offenders is Bethel Church in Redding–deep Trump country. They preach prosperity gospel, raising the dead, speaking in tongues, the whole catalog, probably snakes. And because they aren’t controlled by man’s pesky laws they’ve had troubles with law enforcement many times during COVID. Remember the guy who tried getting away from the FBI this week using a “Thunderball” underwater scooter gambit? They caught him and he has been charged with running a Ponzi scheme. The alleged victims? Members of Bethel Church.
brantl
You just can’t fix stupid, doesn’t mean anything what the specific flavor is, stupid is just lethal.
WaterGirl
I wanted to see what “thousands” actually meant. The place holds 7,700 people legally, so I bet that there could have been as many as 10k people.
If one in a
1,000100 is positive, then that could be 100 COVID-positive people in that room. If we assume Hasidic populations have a higher rate because they won’t follow restrictions, then we could be looking at 200-500 people who came in COVID-positive. Surely an extraordinarily high number of people are going to get sick, and possibly die.Jerzy Russian
Eventually this will become self limiting. The only problem is the spread to other people who did not attend these type of events.
WaterGirl
@Jerzy Russian: The people at that wedding won’t just have been exposed, but they will also surely have been exposed to very high levels of the virus. Which leads me to conclude that they could get much more sick than even the average person.
Yikes.
Mary G
Hoocoodanode:
Ken
Which is a neat trick, while living in New York. I’m reminded of China Mieville’s The City & the City.
GenXFiles
No one wants to be around those crazy fucks so it shouldn’t spread far.
Kent
@trollhattan: and they aren’t content with just fucking up Redding CA. They are the same church that is sending around the superspreader extraordinaire Sean Feucht to infect every other city. https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/09/16/sean-feucht-prayer-rallies-kenosha-chicago/
NotMax
Mom has stopped going to a nearby kosher supermarket (their produce really is so much better than at the regular supermarket) because some of the customers belong to the Hasidic sects which eschew masks.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mary G: I recommend reading the opinion. It brings tears to the eyes.
debbie
@Mary G:
Apparently they’re starting up again in Michigan clamoring for a recount — only in Detroit.
Ken
@Mary G: I’m expecting one of these judges to order Rudy and the others disbarred, assuming any of them still have valid licenses.
Wolvesvalley
@Mary G:
I love this quote from the Washington Post story:
Jerzy Russian
@WaterGirl: I would think the rate is more than 1 in 1000. Also, I assume this was all indoors with closed windows, given that is New York in late November. What is generally the Hasidic’s view of hospitals? Many of them will be seeing the insides of them soon, assuming they don’t fill up.
Lawrence Sportello
@WaterGirl: NYC’s site (scroll down) shows Williamsburg with a positivity of rate of 2.98%. Assuming full legal capacity of 7700, that’s about 230 active cases at the wedding.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Religious zealotry and common sense are inversely proportional.
Starfish
@WaterGirl:That is what they said. It was a 10,000 people event. The Orthodox community has been a significant portion of the outbreaks in New York because of their behavior.
Here is a story from September.
Here is a story from April about 2500 people going to a Rabbi’s funeral.
dmsilev
@Wolvesvalley: A monster made out of dildos glued together with hair dye.
WaterGirl
@debbie: I hope that gets shut down. Hard. No delays. Michigan needs to certify ASAP.
WaterGirl
@Jerzy Russian: oops, 1,000 was a typo for 100. My math was right, though one in 100 of 10,000 = 100. Higher would be the 200-500 range. It will be very grim.
Jerzy Russian
@WaterGirl: Yes, an indoor event with a lot of hooting and hollering. If the numbers were really in the thousands, I think the odds that at least one person dies from COVID is 100%. Likewise, the number of seriously sick people will easily be in the dozens.
WaterGirl
@Lawrence Sportello: And I’m assuming more than capacity, because the article said they had people crammed in. So awful.
dmsilev
@debbie: Also, apparently the Trumpians are throwing sand in the gears of the Wisconsin partial recount they paid for. “Partial” being, of course, “Counties with lots of Black people” in case there was any smidgen of a doubt.
WaterGirl
@Jerzy Russian: And then multiply by some number because hospitals will be full up.
Kent
@debbie: where are you seeing this. I don’t see anything on twitter about a Detroit recount. Wayne County already certified.
SuzieC
@O. Felix Culpa: I read most of it. Obama appointed brilliant judges.
Brachiator
This seems so stupid. And so ego driven. This need of the rabbi, perhaps, to stage an adulation fest, reminds me of Trump’s need for praise and to be seen as the Big Man.
My impression of the best of Judaism is that there is much to put concern for human life foremost. This seems to disrespect that tradition.
But also, getting down to brass tacks, how has the pandemic affected this community? Are we seeing a lot of community spread, hospitalizations, and deaths?
And similar things are happening on a smaller scale all over the place. I keep seeing BBC news stories about secret rave parties being raided, and some reports that younger adults in Spain and France do as much as they can to flout restrictions.
I sometimes think that this virus does not kill enough people, and not across a wide swath of all demographics, and so is not taken seriously.
ETA: I do know one co-worker who had to kick his son out of the house. The kid is a nice guy, goes to college, and loves his family, but thinks he needs to party. The co-worker, however, had to choose between his son and his aged parents, who live at home. He said that it was an easy decision to make.
Another Scott
@hitchhiker: The “conservative” Abrahamic ones seem to often have issues… Reuters (from September):
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Jerzy Russian
Does anyone remember that superspreader event in a Korean church in the early days of the pandemic? One woman apparently infected nearly 40 other people. The same thing will probably happen in this event.
chopper
well that’s good for the jews. thanks, assholes.
Mary G
@O. Felix Culpa: Lol!
dmsilev
To be fair, large swaths society at large aren’t all that much better:
As U.S. coronavirus cases soar toward 200,000 a day, holiday travel is surging
Jerzy Russian
@WaterGirl: We need a spellchecker for math.
chopper
@NotMax:
yeah of course it’s the satmars. those guys, oy
Kent
@Another Scott: Yes. They are all bad. I grew up around the conservative Mennonite Church and even have some Amish relatives. Trump is basically a mirror or looking glass that has exposed every single damn one of them as horrible sociopaths. They are, to a one, all caught up in Covid denial and glorifying their religious defiance of pandemic rules. Fuck all of them. I used to have some tolerance of them. No longer.
White & Gold Purgatorian
No words.
None.
chopper
@Jerzy Russian:
i’ve been to hasidic weddings and they’re pretty packed and they’re pretty nuts.
WaterGirl
@Jerzy Russian: That is brilliant!
GenXFiles
@Another Scott: They worship a god who insisted Abraham kill his own son as a test of his faith. Nothing good can come from that sort of mindfucking.
SuzieC
@Brachiator: Shows that fundamentalist conservative religions are all alike, mostly.
Sebastian
We have to start using mobile device location data to start excluding assholes from medical services.
NotMax
@chopper
“Wow! A sculpture of the Temple Mount made entirely of chopped liver! They must be very religious.”
//
Chetan Murthy
@Sebastian: ankle trackers for all congregants coming out of churches that have been designated as covid-spreader zones. Then the rest of us can get alerts if we’re anywhere near the fuckers. And yeah, the hospitals can bar their entry. And anybody tampering with the tracker gets thrown in the slammer until the pandemic is over.
Too fucking bad if they get the bug in jail.
Procopius
@Ken: IANAL, but from what I have read about various lawyer scandals, I think it is nearly impossible to disbar a lawyer. Remember Orly Taitz? The Russian immigrant, self-taught in law, who passed the California bar examination, and made a name filing suits claiming Obama was not qualified to be President? I’ve always felt admiration for her, because not only did she pass the bar exam, she did it in a second language that she could not have used for long. Many judges threatened to sanction her, one actually did sanction her for $20,000, but she was never disbarred.
Nicole
@dmsilev:
Yeah, I went to celebrate a birthday (outdoors, masked) on the Upper West Side today and there was a line a block long outside an Urgent Care Clinic that was offering Covid tests. Plenty of people planning to travel, I have no doubt. Ugh.
GenXFiles
@Chetan Murthy: Probably just be easier to put a mark on the forehead or hand that clears you to participate in the economy. No mark, no service.
mrmoshpotato
WHAT! THE! FUCK?!
Just had to get married during a raging pandemic, eh? Really? And of course there’s consciousness of guilt here because – Organizers schemed to hide the wedding
How incredibly fucking irresponsible and selfish.
ETA – A Temple Full of Suicidal, Homicidal Sociopaths
Fixed.
Wyatt Salamanca
@Mary G:
Somewhere there’s a straitjacket with Rudy Ghouliani’s name on it. I wish this asshole could be stripped of his law license. He’s making a fucking mockery of our legal system
Yarrow
Given the Hasidic community’s general insularity, why don’t they have their own hospitals? Or do they? They can keep all their sick people together and stop infecting everyone else and overwhelming the other hospitals.
Yarrow
@NotMax:
Why is this? Is it some religious thing? Can’t wear masks because it goes against their religious beliefs?
Kent
They get disbarred all the time for actual crimes. If you get convicted of a felony it’s automatic. But they almost never get disbarred for misbehavior in the courtroom. Or general incompetence.
Chetan Murthy
@Yarrow:
I’m curious to know why, too. But my guess is: for the same reason that other religious sects are anti-mask: they wanna gather their flocks together, to keep indoctrinating them and collecting their receipts/tithes/whatever. Can’t brainwash the sheep by Zoom as effectively.
Amir Khalid
@Procopius:
Dentist/real estate agent/self-taught lawyer Orly Taitz’s industry in acquiring three different sets of professional credentials is indeed admirable. Her industry as a wild-eyed birther kook, not so much.
Gin & Tonic
@Yarrow: There is a large Hasidic community in upstate New York (Rockland County, not that far upstate.) They have their own schools, but any children with physical or learning disabilities are sent to the local public schools, which are legally required to accommodate everyone. So they are certainly not averse to using public resources.
Procopius
You know, I’m so glad to see the correct word used (‘discreet,’ not ‘discrete’), I can forgive the dozens or hundreds who are going to get sick from that
Kent
I think it’s more that they live in a conservative bubble and they only consume conservative religious media which claims Covid is a liberal plot to destroy their religion by prohibiting them from going to church/synagogue and worshipping as is their God-given right.
In other words, mask mandates are just the liberal “nose under the camel’s tent” that will lead to a slippery slope that ends in the government outlawing religion.
They really believe that shit because their leaders tell it to them every day.
The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion
@GenXFiles: I want an “upvote” function for this comment. I snorted so hard I almost hurt myself.
O. Felix Culpa
@Mary G: There’s so much to savor in this opinion. If I were the lawyer on the receiving end, I would crawl into a hole, never to be seen again. Just one of many sick burns:
ballerat
@trollhattan: Amazing how much money stupid gullible people have.
But a fool and his money… never more apt.
Gravenstone
@Kent: Just coincidental that his name looks like it rhymes with fucked, right?
GenXFiles
@The Very Reverend Crimson Fire of Compassion: Sometimes, the solution is so easy it can seem like a revelation.
scav
@O. Felix Culpa: Are they really going to bother to read it? They’re playing for effect in an entirely different court and on a different stage. All they’ll hear is the blahblahblah of static as they cobble together their next bullshit-glitterglu-and-whoopie-cushion PR sparkler to amuse the addled toddlers and their tribal chief.
O. Felix Culpa
@scav: Fair point. Probably not. I was projecting a certain commitment to professional standards, which you correctly suggest…is not the point.
Amir Khalid
@Ken:
I read somewhere (maybe here) that Rudy’s law licence is already suspended because he’s behind on his dues. Is that true?
Amir Khalid
@Gravenstone:
Feucht is German for moist/damp. Make of that what you will.
Brachiator
@O. Felix Culpa:
Lays it out plain!
Another Scott
Indeed.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
In the DC bar. At least there was info circulated on twitter to that effect. I don’t know how it works, if that affects his ability to practice in PA.
Wolvesvalley
@O. Felix Culpa:
Footnote 118 on page 31 is delicious, too.
The bolding is mine.
Amir Khalid
@Another Scott:
Jeb made a funny, or at least gave it his best shot. Please laugh.
E.
@Kent: No, they *can* be disbarred for actual crimes. And most likely a felony would do it but not always. At least when I was practicing, most disbarments occurred from stealing money from clients — that’s the one super big no no. Any felony would have to be reported to the jurisdictions you are barred in and would practically certainly result in a hearing, but I think an attorney could keep his/her license after some felonies, particularly non-violent drug felonies. They’d be on a short leash though.
Ivan X
@GenXFiles: Please do not paint all of us with the same brush. I can’t tell you why us non-Hasids also believe in that God, but we do. Shades of grey exist in the world.
Almost Retired
This is the Hassidic sect (Satmar) featured in Deborah Feldman’s book (and fictionalized Netflix series based on it): “Unorthodox.”
Jeffro
Pat Toomey comes out swinging as he heads into retirement, practically begging trumpov to just give. it. the fuck. up. already.
Good luck GOP!
you’ll never free yourselves from the orange moron!!
O. Felix Culpa
@Wolvesvalley: Ouch.
Kent
@E.: I stand corrected. I think what I read was that 99% or so of disbarments were for actual crimes committed by attorneys as well as for stealing money from clients, which is, of course, also a crime. That sort of thing. Not for being a dick in court.
debbie
@Kent:
I heard it on NPR’s All Things Considered.
Aziz, light!
@chopper:
“The jews,” dude? All of us?
You’re a bigoted moron. Go light your fucking tiki torch.
debbie
@Kent:
Via Google:
E.
@Kent: Yeah, being a dick in court will get you yelled at, you and maybe your client sanctioned, and can get you hauled into a really uncomfortable hearing, may even in extreme cases get you a suspension, but probably not disbarment. Being super incompetent can do it though, I think. You will be required to have proven that incompetence beyond reasonable doubt however . . . .
debbie
@O. Felix Culpa:
Those last two sentences! BOOM!
E.
@Aziz, light!: I think this person meant that the sect in question were “assholes” because what they were doing would be attributed to all Jews. As in, “thanks a lot, asshole, you just made my life harder.”
Leto
If this was already spoken about here, apologies:
Trump Appointee Unconstitutionally Interfered With VOA, Judge Rules
There’s a lot more at the article, but this is another area where I hope smart agency heads will be appointed.
Major Major Major Major
And if de Blasio or Cuomo do anything to crack down on this, the Haredim scream about anti-Semitism
Leto
@debbie: Letter I wouldn’t mind seeing penned:
“Dear RNC,
Get fucked.
– The Voters of Wayne County”
Chetan Murthy
@E.: It’s wrong to single out even Hasidic Jews for this. There have been numerous incidents of Christian churches doing exactly this, right down to Fucking Catholic churches doing open masses in SF (and IIRC, a fucking (unfuckingbelievable) *wedding*). And I’m sure that if I were to look around, I could find Hindu temples and Muslim mosques that were equally (criminally) stupid.
The problem here is religions (and cults) that refuse to submit to modern science and public health practices, not any particular sect or cult.
Believe in whatever Sky Father, Mother, Family, non-Family, or whatever you want: but when the government comes calling, you don’t get an exception because of that belief.
Picking on any particular religion for this is foolish, and, yeah, also bigoted.
P.S. And just to be clear, *my* faith, “Rabid Atheism”‘s only tenet is that all you God-botherers (of whatever stripe) were all dropped on your heads multiple times as infants, and hence are suffering from mental defect. But I’m not ableist: as long as you abide by the laws, I’m good.
Mary G
@Amir Khalid: Even the Republican whose 9/10 rating Jeb objected to dunked on him:
O. Felix Culpa
Another nugget:
scav
@Kent: I’ve got the vague impression it doesn’t actually rule out his being able to go through the motions of lawyering, it just adds another inexactitude to the pile of verbiage they filed.
some info here in tweets further down.
West of the Rockies
OT, but I haven’t seen Adam here in these promiscuous parts since election. Any word on the big galoot?
Bill Arnold
@Gozer:
It’s not just insularity. Some of these communities probably most, are Republicans so reliable that they make white evangelicals look like traitors to the Republican Party. Their information feeds are filtered, but they end up effectively huffing a lot of right wing propaganda. There may also be outgroup anti-masker stuff targeted at them; haven’t looked.
The Satmars in particular at least used to be and I think are very Republican. Story, from old memory:
My mom was working the polls near where I grew up, Dem at the desk next to a registered Republican Nearby, within short walking distance, was a Satmar yeshiva, since abandoned and in ruins. A group of young men with an older leader showed up to vote, clearly from dress and beards from the yeshiva. They were instructed to vote Row B (or whatever the Republican voting party line was that year). OK, fine. One of the young men volunteered in chatting that they had been in Brooklyn in the morning, and were heading upstate. This was clearly a case where a group was voting three times; the two poll workers looked at each other, rolled their eyes but there wasn’t much to do. This suggested an utter disrespect for secular law, though, and it appears it hasn’t changed.
Benw
I guess we’re about 2 weeks out from these assholes screaming that COVID isn’t real at NYC nurses right up until the nurses can get them sedated for the ventilator. Sweet
Mary G
@Wolvesvalley: I still love this one:
IANAL, but even I know judges are extremely irritated by shit like this.
Another Scott
@debbie:
LOLGOP (based in Ann Arbor) isn’t having it:
It’ll be over soon, but Donnie and the Teabaggers are going to try to do as much damage as they can before they slink away.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Wolvesvalley
@Mary G: Oh, yes — I read that one aloud to my husband.
TS (the original)
Has anyone mentioned the G20 – seems they found their soul after trump wandered off to golf finding listening to what is happening in the world related to covid – just too hard.
The world has become a much worse place in the aftermath of trump. I doubt it will ever recover.
Uncle Cosmo
@O. Felix Culpa: Thanks SO much for linking to a motherfucking pay site. Don’t care if it is the WaPo. The goddamn opinion is public record, how dare that moneygrubbing bazillionaire asshole Bezos charge to see it? May all his (unmanned) rockets crash & burn.
mrmoshpotato
“It’s not anti-Semitic, it’s pro-life. You like being alive?”
E.
@Chetan Murthy: I was just interpreting a past comment. I agree with everything you wrote.
Mike in NC
@Leto: Hey now. He just wanted to change the name from “Voice of America” to “Voice of Trump”.
Gin & Tonic
@West of the Rockies: He seems to be busy. I’ve gotten a couple of e-mails, so I can attest that he’s alive.
Patricia Kayden
Renie
@Mary G: How are all these lawyers getting paid? and why are no sanctions being imposed on them
O. Felix Culpa
@Uncle Cosmo: Love and light to you too.
Redshift
@dmsilev: From the TPM article about Wisconsin:
Sounds familiar. There was a Twitter thread a while back from a nonpartisan observer in Detroit, I think. One of the things she recounted was the point at which the GOP observers switched from scrutinizing the process to just lodging a protest for every ballot. She knew this was an explicit strategy because she overheard then on a call to headquarters being instructed to do it.
Just another in their long list of tactics designed to delay counting of mail ballots so it would look like they were “ahead.” And illustrative of how they attempted to paint the later count as suspicious, when what was really suspicious was their deliberate effort to cause that.
Patricia Kayden
Talking about sociopaths.
Mary G
@Wolvesvalley: You know it had to be Rudy.
patroclus
Sidney Powell, the “Orly Taitz” of this cycle, was just on Newsmax with Mark Halperin and threw out many other ludicrous allegations in yet another bizarre performance that I just watched. Among these included an allegation that Brian Kemp is in on the conspiracy in Georgia to deny Trump his rightful win, that Bernie Sanders was similarly the victim in 2016 of the very same conspiracy and that he was told about it and did nothing, that precisely 35,000 votes were added all over the country for every single Democratic candidate in every election by Dominion (which isn’t even used in all such elections) and that they will be filing a massive “Biblical” lawsuit next week (maybe Monday, possibly Wednesday, hopefully by Friday) in Georgia but possibly everywhere else that will blow everything up. I’m not sure if I could follow all of her allegations (Hugo Chavez was brought up a time or two) , but that’s the latest gist.
She also doesn’t think much of Senator Toomey or Judge Brann.
Another Scott
@Uncle Cosmo: Since you asked nicely…
Linky to the PDF.
(Yes, it’s on an Evil Bezos site.)
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Mary G
@Renie: I think one judge awarded attorneys fees to a state.
JanieM
@Uncle Cosmo:
@O. Felix Culpa:
I don’t have a subscription, and I’m having no trouble reading the opinion. You do have to scroll down….
Sebastian
@Chetan Murthy:
We are on the same page.
Ivan X
@West of the Rockies: He occasionally emails me tech questions, so I think he’s ok. Or at least not totally vanished, anyway.
zhena gogolia
Jim, Foolish Literalist
If only people like this– all the “I’m not gonna give in to fear!”– were only a threat to themselves
Mary G
????
Dum, dum, dum, another one bites the dust…
MisterForkbeard
@Patricia Kayden: Wait, they won another one? What was it?
Uncle Cosmo
FTR here is a non-paywalled copy of Judge Brann’s decision.
West of the Rockies
@Gin & Tonic:
Glad to hear it. I recall him promising a post on the dangers of the 75 post-election days but maybe I missed it.
zhena gogolia
@West of the Rockies:
You didn’t miss it, it never appeared. Maybe he’s just depressed.
The rosy scenario I heard from someone here is that he might be having job opportunities opening up now that we’re about to have an honorable president.
CatFacts
For those who want to read Washington Post articles without a subscription, private browsing mode is your friend. So is clearing cookies before and after reading the article. That should work for O. Felix’s link above.
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G: I think about her dying of the bug, and I pray for this consummation, to be devoutly wished. Thoughts and Prayers, Kelly. Thoughts and Prayers.
NotMax
@Uncle Cosmo
Bypassing WaPo’s paywall is easier than finding a pet animal in Mr. Cole’s house. Just sayin’.
;)
debbie
@Another Scott:
Racist pieces of shit. ???
Chetan Murthy
@Mary G: She’s gonna be beggin’ Shitler for that Regeneron shit. Wonder what she’ll have to promise him.
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
?
dmsilev
@zhena gogolia: That’s what, the fifth or sixth Republican Senator to do so? Two weeks after most of the world realized it was over? Sorry, Senator, you only look good in comparison to your colleagues, not on any objective scale.
SFAW
@O. Felix Culpa:
Yeah, I noticed that part. I half-expect Rudy to forget what the case is, and start arguing that allowing gays to marry diminishes/cheapens his own marriage(s)*.
*Three and counting. Must mean he’s really good at it, I guess. Just like his Number One Criminal Client.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uncle Cosmo: Christ, what an asshole.
Roger Moore
@Mary G:
My favorite I’ve read so far:
Yeah, the judge does not think much of the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
CaseyL
@Mary G
@Chetan Murthy:
All those evil mofos who test positive, and the only one who’s died so far is Herman Cain? Why aren’t more of them keeling over?
Loeffler, at least, doesn’t rate being airlifted to Walter Reed.
JoyceH
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Tell you what’s weird. A few days ago I was watching the news shows, and they had someone on, can’t remember who, but might have been Tony Schwartz. Anyway, it was someone who knew Trump before politics. And he said that about five years ago, Trump said to him that Rudy had really ‘lost a step’. Said he was getting vague and rambling and forgetful and tended to nod off at 6:30. So – five years ago, Trump realized that Rudy was past it. Did he FORGET?
Mary G
@CaseyL: Her husband owns the NY Stock Exchange. She can be airlifted anywhere she wants, even without all her insider trading profits off Covid.
Chetan Murthy
@CaseyL: I’m willing to believe that he’s doling out the Regeneron like some evil dictator deals out life-serum to his henchmen. We’ll find out, I’m quite sure, in the new Administration: there’ll be staffers and civil servants who know, and will fess up. They can’t all be Trump loyalists down to the drivers, guards, and clerks.
zhena gogolia
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
Thanks for that link. Downthread from it, the following tweet appeared:
As the locals say: wicked pissah! I hope the asshole GA RWMFs follow that guy’s advice.
patroclus
@CaseyL: Ben Carson is reportedly very ill.
Chetan Murthy
@patroclus: Sadly, I read that they gave him the drug Regeneron that they gave Shitler. I’m sure, at Shitler’s direction. To which I can only say: couldn’t they have given those doses to a more deserving recipient? Like, say, a convict in prison who got covid?
Patricia Kayden
different-church-lady
@Wyatt Salamanca:
Dante attempted a description, but I believe the reality will be so much worse for him.
SFAW
@Redshift:
Just as Rethug elected officials in various Red states fuck with things and force a number of (probably) legit voters to file provisional ballots (which I assume end up in the circular file eventually), the WI ratfuckers should be told they now have to file “provisional objections,” but do it remotely, and those provisional objections will be reviewed in two months.
Chetan Murthy
@SFAW: With a real right to vote in the Constitution, the challenger would need to find the voter and get a sworn affidavit that that wasn’t the voter’s ballot. Maybe even in-person, so that the affidavit could be verified.
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
That fucker should be rendered. In both senses of the word.*
*Yes, I know there are more than two meanings. These specific two deal with fat, and terrists.
SFAW
@Chetan Murthy:
Excellent idea. Just as long as it doesn’t impede or delay the counting (which I assume was implied in your proposal).
WaterGirl
@Wolvesvalley: They are head-smackingly, laughingly, ridiculous.
Chetan Murthy
@SFAW: Yep. Just as with provisional ballots (that are counted at the end) and rejected ballots (which can be cured after rejection), this would be something that the challenger would have to have their people go do, and get the voters back to swear it wasn’t their ballot within a bounded time. But really, all of this is ridiculous.
If we did our voting like the French or other modern countries, these issues wouldn’t happen. Counting happens at the precinct level, publicly, with great transparency, and then the results are rolled-up. Because precincts are so small, there is almost no need for mail-in voting.
Mary G
@patroclus:
Suzanne
@dmsilev: One of my lifelong friends is planning to fly home to Phoenix to see her sister’s family for the holiday — and they are all going to see their mom in the memory care unit she lives in. She keeps saying, “I’ll wear a mask the whole time!”. I’m just astounded, The other sister is a freaking doctor at a major health system you’ve heard of. I don’t know why she isn’t putting the kibosh on this shit.
HOWEVER, I was last on site at my project that just finished construction of the second phase, and that whole area is now considered surge for COVID patients. The nurses raised holy hell at the end of construction, saying that they absolutely would not go to work until glass was put up between the nurse stations and the corridors. (I will note that the glass dividers you see everywhere have absolutely zero evidence of effectiveness, as none of us breathe like Drogon.) So we rushed around like crazy people to put up glass dividers. AND THEN, the first time I went into the space after activation…. I saw FOUR nurses crowd into one station (rather than use the separate stations we built) AND PULL THEIR MASKS DOWN ONCE THEY WERE BEHIND THE GLASS.
I have since refused to go back to the job site for field reports until this situation is more stable. The contractors are not following the rules, and the nurses certainly are not.
Another Scott
@Chetan Murthy: Begging may not do much good. Derek Lowe at ScienceMag on October 29:
(Emphasis added.)
Cheers,
Scott.
Uncle Cosmo
@Omnes Omnibus: Looking in the mirror when you said that?
You really need to butt the fuck out of situations that don’t involve you.
WaterGirl
@Leto: Ask and you shall receive. Or were you hoping for something more formal?
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
The popular comparison to make right now is that more Republican senators have been diagnosed with COVID than have publicly accepted Biden as president elect.
TS (the original)
@patroclus:
My bold – so trump decides who lives and dies – a true dictator in every sense of the word.
https://www.news5cleveland.com/news/national/coronavirus/ben-carson-says-he-was-desperately-ill-with-covid-19
WaterGirl
@West of the Rockies: I heard from Adam today by email, so I can confirm that he is alive and well.
chopper
@Aziz, light!:
what the hell are you talking about?
chopper
@E.:
thank you. didn’t think it needed to be translated.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@TS (the original): I think Chris Christie, a private citizen who was very publicly flouting all public health advice, got the same experimental drug, presumably with trump’s authorization.
Dan B
@Chetan Murthy: I share your sentiments but my my IANAE (Epidemiologist) thought is based on AIDS. When people were threatened for having AIDS they did not get tested. The spread accelerated. They didn’t know they were infected. Their fear put them in turmoil that aggravated dangerous behaviors. They acted out like GI’s headed to war. They partied, did drugs, had sex – frequently it was crazier sex, very frequently.
I loathe the self centered behaviors but these are exacerbated by fears of the disease, despair that your life will change in frightening ways, terror that your culture will vanish, and fears of the persecution that will precede the end of the culture that has been the sustenance of your life.
It’s good to express the raw fury that we are feeling. Soon we must figure out how to calm the fears, our own and the fears of people who are putting us in harms way because of their selfish motives. And it is, perhaps discouragingly, necessary to draw some hard lines in the sand. We – none of us – can harm another person or let any of us be harmed.
We will not tolerate being threatened or tolerate be ing harmed further. We will empathize but not waver.
WaterGirl
@O. Felix Culpa: He often seems rude and cranky. Don’t take it personally.
TS (the original)
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
And for the 27,351st time
Imagine if President Obama had made decisions about who would receive particular medical treatments & who would not. Seems trump has death panels down pat.
burnspbesq
@E.:
Secks with clients is another big no-no.
Omnes Omnibus
@Uncle Cosmo: It’s a fucking blog. It’s not like you were having a private conversation. IOW go piss up a rope.
WaterGirl
@patroclus: It would be a terrible shame if all this hate for Kemp were to impact the Republican turnout for the runoff.
topclimber
@WaterGirl: That’s all very well and good. But it begs the question: Was he emailing from his untraceable personal bunker, situated under two miles of bedrock?
Chetan Murthy
@Dan B: It’s not ankle monitors for being covid-positive: not at all. It’s ankle-monitors for having attended an indoor meeting of any sort greater than a certain size. Period. And yeah, I know there’s nothing to be done about this except stay indoors even fucking longer.
But I’ll never forgive them (or any other Godbotherer who didn’t stay away from their churches/temples/synagogues/weddings/funerals/whatever) for what they’ve done to me and my family.
P.S. Dan, this is *much*, *much* worse than AIDS. This is a respiratory illness. There’s nothing I can do to protect myself, other than hide in my house, given that there are people out there wantonly disregarding basic public health. With AIDS, all I had to do was be celibate at worst, and stick to a single partner (who stuck to me) as second-best. There is no such strategy available to me and my family with this bug: the only way to be safe is to literally withdraw from society.
All because these assholes can’t just forgo their God-Damned in-person MASS meetings for a few months.
burnspbesq
@Chetan Murthy:
Bullshit. It’s a question of scale.
Amir Khalid
@TS (the original):
Wait one minute. Who is Trump to be deciding what drugs to treat Covid-19 patients with? When did he get a medical degree?
WaterGirl
@zhena gogolia: I’m not sure what that tweet is getting at. ??
WaterGirl
@Patricia Kayden: Reading that makes me want to throw up.
West of the Rockies
@Mary G:
Bites the dust? So far only Mr. 999 (Herman Cain) has kicked it. I was hoping Gohmert would keep over. I would LOVE if Turtle got it and croaked.
Chetan Murthy
@burnspbesq: My point is, that there are enough differen Christian churches doing exatly the same thing: mass congregations, that, yeah, it’s bullshit to signle out these particular Hasidic Jews. There are enough fuckers in California, not to speak of the Fucking Bible, that these Satmar (or whatever) aren’t so unique.
West of the Rockies
@Chetan Murthy:
Romeo and Juliet reference!
Extra points for you!
The Pale Scot
@featheredsprite:
burnspbesq
@Mary G:
Not quite, but close. The judge in Maricopa County invited the Secretary of State to apply for an order on fees.
Chetan Murthy
@West of the Rockies: By way of, y’know, Jeeves.
WaterGirl
@TS (the original):
That is absolutely appalling.
WaterGirl
@chopper: I had to read your comment 3 times and i was kind of surprised at what you seemed to be saying. so i think it did need a bit of translating for me.
West of the Rockies
@topclimber:
Adam is in an undisclosed location with Dick Cheney.
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: Are there really mega-churches with 7,000-10,000 in the congregation? In one place at one time?
West of the Rockies
@Chetan Murthy:
Oh, well, I did my thesis on the play a hundred years ago, so dug the reference.
burnspbesq
@WaterGirl:
There are. There are fundie churches in Texas and California (and maybe other states) the size of college basketball arenas.
TS (the original)
@Amir Khalid:
Lord of all he purveys. Nothing belongs to the government or the people. It all belongs to trump.
Note how he has no intention of sharing any knowledge or vaccines with WHO or other countries in the G20. It is his, to give or withhold.
Chetan Murthy
@WaterGirl: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakewood_Church_Central_Campus
check out this pic
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakewood_Church#/media/File:Lakewood_worship.jpg
they’re staging services with 4.2k people every week (and that’s 25% of the actual capacity).
https://abc13.com/lakewood-reopening-houston-church-what-churches-are-open-in-person-capacity-limit/6422338/
WaterGirl
@Chetan Murthy: 16,800 people. I had no idea. That’s crazy.
frosty
@Jeffro: Yes!! My phone call ( which I ran by all you valued commenters) WORKED!!!!
Behold the awesome power of the jackaltariat.
WaterGirl
@frosty: Why didn’t you call sooner? :-)
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
There are churches considerably bigger than that. There are at least a couple of churches that purchased old sports arenas to use as church buildings. For example, Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church bought the former home of the Houston Rockets, which has been renovated into a church with a seating capacity of 16,800.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: Yeah, there was a link at #191 and I saw the 16,800. Crazy.
Roger Moore
@WaterGirl:
They aren’t even the only church out there to buy an old NBA arena. There was a church that bought the old Forum in LA, though they kept it usable as an arena while using it as a church and wound up selling it to Madison Square Garden.
WaterGirl
@Roger Moore: There’s a sucker born every minute.
Sebastian
@Amir Khalid:
Sadly, he did not. He responded and it’s worse than we thought.
Doug Heye had to respond and scold Jeb
Sebastian
@Mary G:
dang, beat me to it by hours lol
Another Scott
@Sebastian:
Apparently it’s an open secret, but funny nonetheless. Especially with the beatdown given to Jeb!
Cheers,
Scott.
Aleta
@Another Scott: Somehow that confounds my mind.
something fabulous
@WaterGirl: (@chopper)
Yes, I think what is missing here is the shorthand: for an older generation of Jewish people (my folks would be 93, 94 if still with us for ex), for any global news event, there was the I think at first serious and then ultimately self-mocking question: “But is it good for the Jews?!” Coming from a people who had had to live there entire lives on the alert and on defense: is there something we need to do right now? how does this impact our situation, our safety? Which by the time I can remember, had kind of evolved into mostly jokes about pop culture, or things that while important were completely peripheral to their lives as Jewish people, e.g. how the Bears were doing, or who had won the Pulitzer that year. [see also, not unrelated: A Shande Fur Die Goyim.] So to me, made sense right away, but I came in with that luggage.
SiubhanDuinne
@West of the Rockies:
Hamlet, not R&J.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
Did we do something that convinced Adam to take a leave from BJ???
Betsy
@mrmoshpotato: It’s telling. That was not a defiant exercise of religious freedom, it was a pure and simple power play in which the leader demonstrated his power over his followers’ minds. It was actually too irresistible to him, to flex that he can keep thousands of people silent on such an important, life-threatening subject. He’s showing off his totality of power, AND he’s showing his cult members how far they must go to honor his authority.
In fact, this opportunity to flex and enforce his control probably inflamed his “need” to hold his son’s wedding RIGHT now, before the vaccines put an end to it.
Also , think how much fear his followers must have of him, and what tactics he must be using on them, to carry out this so hermetically. Some insiders are really suffering (and you can bet they are the women and children). Patriarchy is all the same.
Geminid
@rikyrah: I have no idea.
Betsy
@Yarrow: can’t wear masks because it is a great way to show how witlessly the leader is able to make his cult followers comply. The scarier the compliance is to follow, the better it conveys the sense of the leader’s mind control.
Betsy
@Chetan Murthy: I love zoom for such a variety of reasons
Betsy
@Kent: Maybe partly but it’s more important as a signifier of group cohesion, like the tiny differences between Amish bonnets that are considered essential to whatever sub-sect doctrine of vital importance, like “no bonnet strings longer than 7 inches” or something
But in the case of masks, it’s also the leader’s way of showing to what lengths his followers will go to obey him, even suspending the fear of death.
C.S.Strowbridge
I am 100% with you. I’m done with these people. If they do get infected, they shouldn’t be allowed to go to a hospital to get treatment. Just quarantine them and let nature take its course.
Geminid
@Betsy: Patriarchy is still pervasive in our broader culture and is sometimes so ingrained that it’s almost unnoticed. But this particular branch of Judaism expresses it in a pure form.
Non-compliance with public health measures by many of the ultra-orthodox, or Haredi, has been a real problem in Israel also. As in the U.S., there are senior rabbis in the haredi community who push back against dangerous behavior, but others celebrate it. A writer in The Times of Israel noted that a central norm of the haredi is that they are different, apart from the modern society in which they live. Since the broader society of secular and observant Jews can be attractive to younger haredi, the rabbis try to constantly affirm and enforce separation and apartness. In the pandemic, this can result in non-compliance that endangers the haredim and other Israelis.
The issue of draft deferments for haredi youth comes up often in Israeli politics. Generally, all young Jewish Israelis do mandatory military service, and join the reserves after active duty. Arabs are not drafted, though a small number of Arab volunteers serve in a single regiment. But Haredi youth can receive draft deferments. The ostensible reason is a duty to study the Torah, but one rabbi interviewed on the subject let the cat out of the bag when he said, we just don’t like our young men coming back from the Army with new ideas.
.
SWMBO
@WaterGirl: There are a couple of mega churches here in South Florida. One has a sanctuary that seats 3500 people. They have to have 4 services on Sunday morning so that everyone can get in their worship every week. They are huge. They are insular (couple of my husband’s coworkers are members and they are “in” and the rest of us sinners are “out”. They don’t bother to hide it.)
One of the local mega churches ran out of room and bought the Sunrise Musical Theater for their congregation. Seats around 4,000.
Bill
Covid went through the Hasidic community like wildfire last winter and this spring. A rabbi with whom I’m acquainted said “we’ve all had it”. The Hasids were donating plasma once they’d recovered. I don’t agree with their actions here, but the impact may be less than we suspect.
evodevo
@WaterGirl: yes, yes there are…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megachurches_in_the_United_States
brantl
@Chetan Murthy: That particular synagogue deserves to have its tax immunity revoked.
brantl
@patroclus: Couldn’t happen to a bigger idiot.
brantl
@Uncle Cosmo: How silly do you have to look being combative, before you apologize?