Perhaps foolishly, I’m still clinging to the hope that being loudly and consistently pro-virus and anti-protect-kids-from-the-virus will blow up in the faces of Trumpy Republicans like Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. They’re determined to test my hypothesis.
On Friday, Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran (an insufferable pricklouse* who is NOT the president of FSU) gave public school districts in Alachua and Broward Counties an ultimatum: reverse mask mandates, or the state will refuse to pay schoolboard members who voted to impose them. Those two districts were the first to defy Governor DeSantis’s anti-mask agenda.
They’ve since been joined by at least five other districts: Hillsborough, Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Leon and Sarasota Counties. I’m not sure what percentage of Florida schoolchildren these counties represent, but it’s well north of a third since these are all population centers.
It’s also notable that Sarasota County joined the mask party since that county is dominated by Republicans. Here’s why even some Republicans are telling Corcoran and RegeneRon to stuff it: [TB Times]
Florida’s pandemic is getting deadlier and infecting more children.
The state reported 1,486 deaths, a 141 percent increase from two weeks ago. And it’s the most deaths since Feb. 10, as federal data shows Florida approaching the weekly death toll last seen this past winter.
One out of every four COVID-19 infections recorded by the state in the most recent seven-day period were 19 or younger.
The COVID positivity rate for Florida teens is 25%. Let that sink in.
I’ve noted in this space before that DeSantis is gambling with our lives. That wasn’t hyperbole. He made the bet that since most of the state’s seniors are vaccinated, he could pretend the pandemic was over, reasoning that even if Florida became a COVID-19 hotspot (as it did), the death rate would remain well below pre-vaccine peaks. He was wrong about that. Hospitals are filling up, and kids are getting sick.
So, in terms of politics, will it matter? Not to the Trumpy base, which will croak out “MAGA” before the breathing tube stops their vocal chords. But I wonder if Sarasota County’s defection gives DeSantis and his all-sycophant staff pause. They keep doubling down because they think to do otherwise would look weak.
But as some of y’all have pointed out, it makes the governor look weak when schoolboards tell him and his threatening minions to go pound sand. Terrible political hack Richard Corcoran’s threats about withholding schoolboard salaries are empty anyway since the Biden admin has the schoolboard’s backs on the issue. It just makes DeSantis and his people look like impotent and vindictive cockwaffles.
And it’s interesting that Sarasota defected after Corcoran issued the ultimatum. Maybe there will be a reckoning. We’ll find out next year.
Open thread!
*Shamelessly stolen from valued commenter Miss Bianca.
Mowgli
Pricklouse is my new metalcore/folk fusion band.
And I have no hope for Florida, period.
lamh36
Just dropping in to say hi cause it’s been a while.
I’ve been steadily lurking, but today is a big day…
Today is the first day of virtual Kindergarten for my niece Layla and 5 years before today she was just a lil bean! Happy 5th Birthday to my neicy Layla Grace!! She looks different, I have the same hair…LOL
https://twitter.com/psddluva4evah/status/1429845828626178049?s=20
Earlier this month (Aug 2) was my neice Zoe’s 6th birthday! 2 neices in one month from my 2 youngest sisters! August has become one of those good months in my family.
Stay frosty Juicers…gotta go back to lurking, consider this my sign of life post…LOL
Nicole
@lamh36: Lovely to hear from you and wishing your nieces an excellent and exciting and fun and safe school year ahead!
germy
https://www.curbed.com/2021/08/the-villages-florida-golf-carts-census.html
An examination of the villages in Fla.
I didn’t know about the design history. For some reason I thought they were just a bunch of ranch houses surrounding golf courses, and nothing else. But it’s the entire disney nostalgia experience.
Chief Oshkosh
And apparently some Florida hospital docs just staged a walkout protest to highlight that south FL hospitals are so far beyond capacity that that unvaccinated are now, essentially, killing the vaccinated. There are so many unvaccinated in the hospitals that all the resources are taken.
AFAIC, hospitals triage everyday for many reasons. Just as “unvaccinated” as another triage factor. And make sure to set aside a parking lot so you have a place to dump ’em.
MisterForkbeard
@lamh36: She’s adorable. My 4 and 6 year olds are back in school (in person!), and they’re both having fun but also upset they have to get up early and can’t play video games all morning.
HinTN
And paraphrasing The Rude Pundit, too. We live for your eloquent turn of phrase, Ms
CheckerCracker.Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
DeathSantis hasn’t employed much leverage. He’s trying to withhold salaries of school board members. who voted for mandates. That’s weak sauce, and I’d be surprised if it does anything.
Also, I wonder if the crush that the Axios of evil has on RegenerRon is similar to the crush they have on wars in Afghanistan — a refined taste not shared with the general population.
germy
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
Did you see Cuomo’s “farewell” address?
Just Chuck
He’s not gambling with lives. He’s murdering people.
dmsilev
Even with vaccinations and with all of the tricks that the state is trying to play with the data, Florida’s COVID death rate is at an all-time high (average is currently 210/day, well above the worst of last winter or this time last year). And, well, the case and hospitalization counts are still rising, which means it’s gonna get worse.
Sigh.
sab
@lamh36: HELLO!
HinTN
@HinTN: autocorrect, FFS.
Ms Cracker, please.
SiubhanDuinne
@lamh36:
So glad to see you! How can your nieces possibly be 5 and 6?
Also, you’re right about August!
Elizabelle
Relieved to see this is about DeSantis and not another post bashing Andew Cuomo.
craigie
In other pandemic news, Contagion is back on the telly, via Hulu. The first half of this movie (released 2011) reads like a documentary of our current situation. The second half is pretty spot on as well, except for speeded up.
And in the credits is the line “Not if, but when”
If there is a sequel, they can write “We told you so”
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@germy: Golf carts with large condos are also common in Arizona retirement communities.
Nicole
I’m glad the school board members are telling DeSantis to take his 30 pieces of silver and shove it. Children’s lives are worth more than any salary.
(As a New Yorker, I was surprised to find out School Board Member is a paid gig in Florida; it’s not in NYC)
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@Elizabelle: No need, today is his last day! Bring on Kathy Hochul!
Also, he went out gracelessly, blaming everyone but himself.
Betty Cracker
@dmsilev: Yep. IIRC, case counts were down slightly last week, which may mean that we’re on the downslope? I hope so, but schools just started within the past couple of weeks, so who knows. It’s a terrible situation. My ER doc SIL is exhausted and angry, and I don’t blame her.
germy
rikyrah
Lord Have Mercy :(
Ken
@dmsilev: I’m not seeing that Florida’s “tricks” are having much effect on the data. The curves are stepped, but the upward trends are still there and still horrible.
It will even bite them a bit once things turn around, since then their numbers will be pegged at higher values than reality for a week.
waspuppet
There does seem to be this trend of an inverse relationship between popularity of Republican ideas and actual people living in a place. Vast, empty expanses dotted by angry white shut-ins mainlining Fox News and OAN are GOP country.
zhena gogolia
@germy: She’s in the WaPo today excoriating Biden and telling him not to negotiate with the Taliban. The comments are pretty harsh.
brendancalling
@Chief Oshkosh: yup. Triage, and put them on the bottom of the list.
rikyrah
@Just Chuck:
TELL IT
SiubhanDuinne
This made me laugh. Sorry, the person who sent it to me didn’t include a source.
My inner 12-year-old is giggling uncontrollably.
Spanky
They look like it because that’s what they are.
quakerinabasement
I saw Miss Bianca’s use of pricklouse and I was also tickled by it. Turns out it is a real, if archaic one. It was originally a term of contempt for a tailor, but came to refer to any lousy person.
germy
@zhena gogolia:
You mean Nikki Haley?
Nikki Fried is the one running against Ron DeSantis.
Nikki Haley wants to be president.
Oklahomo
It’s gotten bad enough here in Eastern Oklahoma that the family doctor’s office called this morning and now all appointments for simple stuff like prescription renewal will be done via telemedicine. They are exhausted from battling the anti-mask idiots and anti-vax idiots.
Yutsano
@SiubhanDuinne: I found several of them, but I picked the Canadian one. Because reasons. For both of us. :P
Elizabelle
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Governor Hochul! We look forward to your post about her tomorrow.
Earl
These are school board salaries in Florida https://fsba.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/2017-2018-Salary_Chart.pdf .
Hillsborough: $44k, Miami-Dade:$44k, Palm Beach: $44k, Leon:$39k and Sarasota Counties:$41k
I suspect for most school board members, this ain’t their day job. How effective will this threat be?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Damn, and I though 1.2 in my county was bad.
mrmoshpotato
Oh won’t someone pleeeeease think of the children?!
What? That would require us adults limiting our activities and not being selfish slapdicks? To hell with the brats!
Jim Appleton
Due respect, I don’t see much hope, and I condemn TFG as 99% responsible for the Delta carnage.
Here’s an informative piece about southern Oregon’s horrible Covid spike.
https://www.oregonlive.com/coronavirus/2021/08/heartache-in-southern-oregon-as-record-covid-surge-overwhelms-hospitals-patients-die.html
Demographics are clear from the article.
My take away is that once TFG set the table, these folks were never going to accept that the coming meal might convince them to change their order.
Albatrossity
Pricklouse is good. Elizabeth’s favorite term for these guys is shitheart
Earl
@Just Chuck: I think a focus on DeSantis personally is a waste of time; it’s not like he’s doing things his voters dislike. His voters choose to trade a heightened death rate for reopening.
trollhattan
From the flaming wilds of California comes the news that Larry Elder, leading Republican candidate for governor, has replaced his campaign manager who, one supposes, should have been on task squelching the whole awkward Larry gets high and points loaded gun at fiancee thing.
Here’s my new theory, which is mine and very smart: If Larry, like any good Republican, stays in the race because any news is good news for Larry and besides, he ain’t ashamed of shit, and if Larry continues to lead in the polls, because pointing guns at ladies looks good to Republicans, then Newsom can campaign against Larry and ignore the other Republicans. He can distill his message to “Unless you want this lunatic to be governor, vote no on the recall. Thanks.”
Larry just might be the unifier we’ve been looking for. You go, you slavery-loving scamp.
apocalipstick
@Nicole: That was my question: is school board member a salaried position in FL? In my lil town it’s an elected position with no remuneration other than the acknowledgment that one is a mover and shaker in the community.
Doc Sardonic
@Nicole: Not only is it a paid gig, it is a well paid gig. In 2019 the lowest paid school board member in the state was around $26,500, give or take a couple hundred bucks, for a few meetings a month. Salaries are determined by population of the county and a few other variables or matching the salary of a first year teacher, which ever is lower.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
LOL. Even better is imagining it uttered by Jacinda Ardern, who has a textbook Kiwi accent and my unconditional pledge of love.
VeniceRiley
Louseprick. That might work better! What was that Shelley Long and Bette Midler kidnap caper movie with the unforgettable line “Needledick bugf*cker.”
Florida docs staging a symbolic walkout at shift change. Hope it gets media attention.
KrackenJack
@HinTN:
So many questions. Are they fried or salted? Do you serve them with maple syrup? I couldn’t find anything on the Food Network.
geg6
I really don’t know how you continue to live there, Betty. I know that I will never again step foot in the plague state, regardless of all the friends and family we have there. They want to see us, they can come here. If they don’t want to come here, tough luck.
I was fired up over Florida Man yesterday anyway. Pissed me off all afternoon. Due to the Shell cracker plant being built here, we have had an influx of assholes from COVID hotspot states for the last couple of years. Most of them are from TX, OK and LA, based on the license plates on their stupid giant pickups, but there are also some number of FL idiots mixed in. I was going to my sister’s yesterday for a dip in her pool when some asshole in a gigantic red pickup pulled out in front of me. Pissed me off enough because there was a car in front of me with the legal distance between us and this idiot pulled out into the gap, such as it was. Then he proceeded to tailgate the guy in front of him. That car had about five other cars in front of it, but FL dickhead didn’t give a shit and kept riding his bumper. One of cars in front stopped in order to make a left turn and FL asshole then attempted to pass on the right side on a two-lane road. He finally realized he was gonna get t-boned by a car pulling out of the street the other car was turning into, so he decided to get back into line. When we all were able accelerate again, I found out this dick had some kind of aftermarket exhaust that spewed black smoke out of a huge tailpipe, leaving a black cloud. After that, every time he accelerated a little bit, he made sure the black smoke was spewing out. I rode about 3 miles behind this dipshit as he tailgated the entire time and I was fuming the whole way. The smoke finally cleared enough that I caught a glimpse of his plate and saw it was a FL plate. I admit to having thoughts all the way to my sister’s that I’d like to stand my ground against that asshole for trying to kill us all here in PA just by driving.
Kay
@germy:
Democrats have to stay competitive in Florida. It’s too big to let go of- they have to figure it out so it stays swingy.
geg6
@Nicole:
Surprised me, too. None of them get paid in PA either.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
Here in the supposed blue fortress of Sacramento County the rate of everything Covid is up; everything, that is, except the rate of new vaccinations.
Among the disturbing new data are metrics for breakthrough cases, which they’ve recently begun to publish. Early summer it was circa 0.5%/100k population and today it’s 14.1% (total rate 34.4%).
They do not report outcomes, so one can’t know if any of the hospitalization or ICU cases are breakthrough people. Perhaps they don’t even collect the information, this is all a work in progress.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: Question: any chance you Californians can get rid of these insane recalls?
It is criminal to be spending that amount of money on political theatre during a pandemic during wildfires and drought. Criminal.
What could you do to change this system? Could voters vote against it on a referendum?
It’s insane to let political tricksters f*ck with the governorship of a state with such an enormous economy. This has to stop.
It is the opposite of good government.
Aimai
@lamh36: congrats lahm36!I’ve lived for these pictures ever since you first posted about these little beans.
trollhattan
@geg6: “Rolling coal.” Don’t google that if you value keeping your blood pressure in check. “Pwning the Priuses” is a lifestyle.
jonas
In other words, like Republicans. Unfortunately, as Betty frequently reminds us, that remains a good look in FL, so I wouldn’t count DeSantis or any of his ilk out quite yet.
mrmoshpotato
@craigie:
Fixed.
CaseyL
You turn a mean phrase, Ms. Cracker. I will now look for opportunities to use this one! Easy to do, as it applies to 99.9% of the GQP.
My Mom lives in Florida (Broward County). I keep telling her “Don’t leave the house. You’re not leaving the house, right??” Happily, Mom was already a homebody, and is fully vaxxed, so as long as she can do her grocery shopping during Old Persons’ Hour and stay fully masked she should be (*knocks wood*) okay.
My oldest BFF also lives in Florida (Miami Dade), and caught Covid a couple of weeks ago. She’s fully vaxxed, but also an asthmatic, so it is kicking her ass. She was doing OK last time I spoke to her, but that was a week ago.
It’s good to see the poll showing Fried way out ahead of DeSantis. My god, what an amazing thing it would be to kick that thanatophile to the curb. And, please FSM, the two GQP Senators with him.
Kay
Miss Bianca
@Mowgli: Ha! Have to confess to both you and Betty Cracker (and well, the world at large apparently) that “pricklouse” is not a term of art that I coined myself – I lifted it from, of all things, Samuel Pepys’s diary.
Yes, in high school we were assigned chunks of Pepys’s diary to read (it was AP English, after all), and I may have been the only one to actually read them. In any case, I have never forgotten that Pepys and his wife got into a heated imbroglio over something or other, and he called her some name, I forget what, which prompted her to brand him a pricklouse in return.
That epithet has warmed the cockles of my liver for lo these forty years since first I read it. And probably did its part to turn me into the deep fan of Restoration England’s literature and history that I became, and remain, to this day.
geg6
@trollhattan:
You’d think that would be popular around here, where people and their parents and grandparents actually mined coal. But no. Only this dickhead from Florida.
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
IDK for sure, but assume it would take a constitutional amendment via ballot initiative. There’s a process:
Want to believe this is possible because folks are generally sick of all the initiatives, propositions and now, serial recalls. The recall mechanics for sure need to be changed. For starters, at least 50% of the vote from the panel of candidates to become new governor and second, let the sitting governor be listed.
RSA
A friend in Texas has passed on a screenshot of a message apparently sent to faculty at a local public community college, with these lines:
I can’t verify, but if so it’s almost incredible.
Mike S
Meanwhile Fox News has upped their mass murder game.
Miss Bianca
@lamh36: Yay, you’re back! Have missed you. Glad you are still lurking even if not commenting, but please come back and comment more!
Shalimar
duplicate
OGLiberal
I honestly just hate about 50% of the planet. Is that wrong?
Miss Bianca
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: The biggest thing that struck me about that news nugget, I confess, was the thought that flashed through my mind: “Wait, school board members get *paid*?!”
Jay C
Except they are Republicans: they will likely look (and find a way) to turn this into an electoral plus.
sab
@geg6: He was probably a midwestern transplant to FL. Native born Floridians are a lot more laid back. Pass on the right? Why bother?
Shalimar
@germy: It was a campaign speech. Odds are very high Cuomo is running in 2022.
Elizabelle
@OGLiberal: Yes. That’s a sign you need to get off the internet and stop watching the news for a while. Seriously.
Doc Sardonic
@geg6: Just for the record, Florida was a nice place, before ya’ll above the Mason-Dixon Line started sending your parents and grandparents down here to retire. We hadn’t had a Republican Governor since Reconstruction until 1966 when by some fluke Claude Kirk got elected. Actually, Kirk getting elected was the result of an all caps NASTY Democratic primary and the losing side switched and voted for Kirk in the general. The same thing happened in ‘86 I think when Bob Martinez and that broke the Democratic Party here and it remains broken. So in short with all the love and positivity I can muster, Bless your heart and thank you for staying the hell out of Florida.
Miss Bianca
@craigie: If there’s a sequel, it’s going to be about how they developed a vaccine and nobody got vaccinated, so everybody gets wiped out. Contagion II: Electric Boogaloo, or Hey, MaCorona!
rikyrah
@Nicole:
I, too, was shocked to hear that School Board Members got an actual salary.
sab
@apocalipstick: In my city in Ohio they get paid, but only peanuts. They do it for love of the schools because they sure aren’t in it for the money. Still have to beware of the RWNJs, some true believers, others subsidized hacks on their way up politically.
Betty Cracker
@trollhattan: Wow, that data on breakthrough cases is alarming, but it jibes with what I’m seeing anecdotally. I also suspect we’re flying blind in some ways because we’ve never tested enough; we suck at it when compared with other rich countries. Data collection is probably also hampered by our ridiculously fragmented for-profit healthcare delivery system, which perversely provides incentive for sick people without coverage to ride out an illness out sans care.
OGLiberal
@Miss Bianca: Maybe in bigger towns. Where I grew up the only people on the board were either really, really dedicated or sociopaths because it was the most thankless job on the planet. Most were the latter – grr, grr….taxes, fuck the kids! And this was in a town with pretty much no upper class folks, no minorities and no religious nuts. Fucking lunatics. Number of times the school budget passed in my life there? Never.
Doc Sardonic
@sab: Thank You, for the most part those of us who can trace our Florida roots back to around the time the Spanish showed up generally are fairly laid back and calm. All we want to do is skin alligators in the summer and fleece Yankees in the winter.
Elizabelle
@trollhattan: I also think there should have to be a way higher number of verified signatures to proceed with a recall. Like by a factor of five to ten times more. It’s too easy, frankly, and it should not be. It’s a way for cranks to overturn a free and fair election, and it needs to stop.
ETA: And thank you for the response!!
Miss Bianca
@Jim Appleton:
Great analogy!
catclub
Douglas Adams wrote that babelfish universal translator was responsible for unprecedented wars and horror, because now more beings could understand each other, and hated each other even more.
Why only 50%?
Howard Campbell's Soup
@Jim Appleton: oregonlive is behind a paywall, here’s a similar article about the Oregon spike that’s not behind a paywall:
https://www.opb.org/article/2021/08/21/oregon-covid-19-cases-icu-patients-hospital-delta-variant-hospitalizations/
morbidly, I am tracking how the spike plays out at the county level — will the vaccine continue to shield the highly vaccinated metro PDX counties, or is it just a matter of time till this surge moves into Portland and cases really go up?
cain
@lamh36:
Yay to your nieces and lovely to see that you are dropping in from time to time! :D
sab
@Doc Sardonic: I lived in Florida during my entire elementary school time in the sixties. It seems like it is a lot different now. Too flat for my Appalachian foothills taste, but otherwise it was lovely.
ETA I did mind the poisonous snakes and alligators. My best friend had pet cockroaches. I think anoles are adorable
And the sunrises and sunsets are beyond amazing. In Ohio all I see is a bunch of trees overhead.
cain
@Chief Oshkosh:
Won’t the medical staff itself (which some are unvaccinated because they are idiots) are also going to get fucked? Hospitals should now be mandating that vaccine to protect their staff from these idiots within and out.
Benw
Today is our school district’s BOE meeting to roll out the plan for this school year. First day back is September 1st. Fingers crossed that they use the Pfizer approval to mandate vaccines for 12+ AND masks. It’s tense because anti-masking assholes are attending all the local district meetings here and shouting down and threatening the board and parents.
Fair Economist
@Chief Oshkosh:
An unvaccinated person is less likely to recover, so it’s a legitimate basis for triage. Better to treat two vaccinated people who will both likely recover than one unvaxxed who will be in longer and be more likely to die.
https://twitter.com/PaulMainwood/status/1429793104698253316
Cacti
So the “true Floridians” are the first colonists.
Got it. ;-)
Shalimar
catclub
@sab:
I suspect it is not the salary, it is being able to hire your relatives on the school system payroll.
sab
@Cacti: They were. St Augustine is the oldest US city. But why be so mean?
MoCaAce
No Lie told (he types from the middle of a vast, empty expanse)
I can no longer muster even the tiniest shred of sympathy for these unvaxxed idiots when they wind up in the hospital.
And yes, Vaccinated/unvaccinated should be at the top of the triage decision tree in every emergency room. Send those idiots home to pray to their orange god.
H.E.Wolf
“Outrageous Fortune”, 1987, about two acting students, one of whom (Shelley) wants to play Hamlet (and triumphantly does, at the end, with Bette as her Ophelia).
The actual epithet was “Needledick the Bugfucker”, as an explanation to a coroner why the corpse on the autopsy table could not possibly be the acting teacher whom the two women both knew, er, Biblically.
That 3rd word was bleeped when it was the in-flight movie on one of my plane trips, some years later….
a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio
@lamh36: BUT THEY WERE BABIES JUST LAST WEEK!!!!!!!!!!
Good to hear from you; I hope everyone is doing as well as possible
Cacti
@sab: I just think the whole “my people colonized before yours did” is very…white.
germy
sab
@Cacti: What does that even mean? 1619 mean anything at all to you?
Cacti
@sab: The noble Spaniards referenced by the previous poster had slaves in North America a good 50 years before the Brits got started.
Matt McIrvin
An interesting question is precisely why COVID death rates in Florida are so unusually high if their vaccination rate is merely average. Is this a catastrophe that’s coming to everyone else, even if they’ve got a reasonable amount of vaccination? Or is it something unique to Florida’s combination of very unevenly distributed vaccination and a state government actively hostile to control measures?
But it’s hard to answer that question, because the state is suppressing reporting of so much detailed data. We don’t have the kinds of county-by-county numbers that we have elsewhere.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@lamh36: Good to see you ’round these parts, you’ve been missed.
Matt McIrvin
@trollhattan: There is data from elsewhere implying that breakthrough infections are very unlikely to result in hospitalization. I also get the impression that the unlikelihood of this varies with age as with so many other things. But it’d be nice to have more widespread tracking of these things.
geg6
@sab:
I have to say, that has not been my experience when driving in Florida. The laid back part, I mean. Except in West Palm. All the old people there are not what I would call laid back, rather terrible old slow drivers. Everywhere else I’ve driven (Tampa, Bradenton, Miami, the Keys, Panama Beach, Jacksonville), people drive like lunatics, IMHO.
sab
@Cacti: Yes. So a lot of black Floridian families have been there for a very very long time. And need to be treated with respect. And Florida has been settled from the old world for a very long time.
Growing up, my very white brother spoke gullah that he learned from black boys around town.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aimai:
How lovely to see you! It’s been a while. Hope you have been well and happy and busy.
Doc Sardonic
@Cacti: Actually, the native Floridians were the Pensacola, Apalachee, Timucua, Tocobago, Calusa, Saturiwa, Utina, Potano, Ocale, Tequesta, Ais, Mayaca, Jororo, Chacato and Chisca, among others. If you were born here you can accurately claim to be a native Floridian, but those of us whose families have been here for generation upon generation feel a little differently.
Emma from Miami
@lamh36: Wait. Didn’t you just post about her birth just last week? Holy crap. Time passes.
Tony Gerace
@Chief Oshkosh: Given the fact that there is no justice
@Chief Oshkosh: Given the fact that there is no justice in the world, this horrible train wreck in Florida might benefit DeSantis. By demonstrating that he is a moral monster, he might be able to wrest the 2024 GOP nomination away from Trump.
Ruckus
Always with the curative phrase you are BC.
Isn’t if fun to see public officials laughing at the firing squad as they stand in front of it?
I finally understand why people hate clowns… They look funny and they aren’t.
sab
@Aimai: We were just mentionning you a few days ago on a Cole post where he was talking about commenters he misses.
SN in CO
I am usually lost in the atmosphere here, since I mostly lurk.
But a glancing comment in this post made me comment. I think Betty has a point, since to me the idea that somehow by 2022 (much less 2024) the Rs will be back to a position of strength because “midterms always go against the incumbent president’s party” seems to me like the mindless repetition of conventional wisdom.
I’m sorry – I think that “triggering liberals over your kids and your grandkids’ coffins” is not something that will be remembered by anyone with fondness (and most certainly not forgotten by 2022). Maybe we need to amend the conventional wisdom to: “In the absence of suicidal behavior by the opposition and a deadly pandemic, the incumbent president’s party always loses the midterms.”
trollhattan
@Elizabelle:
Agree. And since my idea of not allowing paid signature collection appears to be unconstitutional (in a nation where money = speech) then raising the count bar, a lot, is the only way to stanch the flood of ballot measures.
Currently, the needed signature count is some % of the last statewide vote. In periods following midterm elections that puts the bar really low, making it much easier to qualify and harvesting things like “Proposition 00–Making Bare Boobies Mandatory.”
Mike S
@Doc Sardonic: I am not sure having Democratic Governors for the years between reconstruction and the time when Democrats like Strom Thurmond were switching to the Republican Party is the good thing you think it is.
sab
@geg6: I never got south of Orlando. As they say, the further south you go in Florida the further North you are.
Miss Bianca
@H.E.Wolf: How did I miss this movie? Sounds right up my alley! Just ordered the DVD through the library.
Steeplejack
@lamh36:
Good to see you!
Ruckus
@lamh36:
Glad everyone is OK.
Layla looks great! And has a cool name to go with it!
Good to see you here.
geg6
@Doc Sardonic:
Don’t blame me. Neither my parents or grandparents wanted anything to do with Florida. The furthest south they cared to venture was Virginia and that was not comfortable for them. They weren’t much on crossing the Mason-Dixon. It’s my partner’s daughter and granddaughter who live there. If he wants to go there to visit, fine. I’m not going. No one on my side of the family is there.
So no worries. I never liked FL much anyway. I’m not into heat or beaches. Gimme a great city–NYC, Chicago, SF. Those are my preferred vacation spots.
dr. bloor
@Matt McIrvin:
My guess is a combination of population density, nonrandom distribution of unvaxxed, and attitudes toward masking that range from disinterest to actively hostile, but that’s just spitballing. Delta has been around long enough now to see a bigger spread in those dark maroon colored states on COVID Act Now site, but it doesn’t seem to be happening.
Elizabelle
Daily WH press briefing underway.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
So Kentucky’s governor did such a good job with its COVID mitigation last year that our RWNJ GOP supermajority took away his power this year – and we’ve been paying the price, looking at the positivity map. Our Supreme Court finally threw its hands in the air after the law change this weekend, and said “he no longer has the power to do anything – he has to call expensive special sessions of spreadnecks who get their medical info via Facebook memes and YouTube videos and comments to convince them to do something.”
Anyway, the end of the governor’s mandates has been working its way into the courts. There’s already the impetus to be lazy and do it like it’s always been done; today, the completely useless traffic/misdemeanor docket was packed with litigants, lawyers and cops. I kept moving away, but people kept arriving – even had one wheezing woman sit right next to me. The conference rooms are 10X10 or so, with tables, desks and chairs – people were crowding in, a half dozen at a time. In the end, they’d misplaced my file and tried to pass to tomorrow.
Ultimately, they never even brought my client over – despite there being an order to do so. He’s on “inmate COVID restriction” due to exposure in-house. They won’t bring him to court on that restriction. I suggested doing something virtually and letting me appear virtually, but it seems that Metro Corrections has solved that – they completely shut down all ability to do virtual appearances unless ordered to do otherwise.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@SiubhanDuinne: I saw a text exchange between a mother and daughter. Mother made a joke about “going out to spread my legs”.
Daughter hadn’t heard about the faux pas and reacted as one would to hearing that from one’s mother.
geg6
@sab:
We get spectacular sunrises and sunsets here in PA. You must live in the deepest darkest woods of Ohio.
sab
@geg6: You sound like my mom. Who married a guy who loved marine biology ( but worked in medicine.) She hated every second down there in Florida, while my dad paddled off peacefully in the canoe on the tidal estuary after a grueling day at work.
Doc Sardonic
@Mike S: Wasn’t making a claim as to good or bad, just the fact that Florida was a reliably Democratic state from reconstruction until 1966 and again until 1986. Also had Democratic governors unti Jeb! Bush, that’s when the wheels really came off.
geg6
@Cacti:
Heh.
gvg
@Cacti: Hispanic actually.
sab
@geg6: Woods do suck for sunrises and sunsets, and our woods are very thick.
lee
@lamh36:
Howdy!
How exciting for everyone in the family. I still remember both my kid’s first day of school. What a wonderful time.
Ruckus
@Elizabelle:
The concept isn’t all that bad, it’s the execution that really sucks.
The percentage of voters who have to sign the petition needs to be raised, a lot. The people who run should have a a much larger number of signatures.
IOW the concept of recall is not the problem, the process to get to the recall election needs to be a lot harder. This is like the worst joke about politics, a not horrible punch line, preceded by months of absolute political shit.
Professor Bigfoot
@Mike S:, oh thank you. Whenever a white person from the Old Confederacy starts going on about how terrible “the Yankees” are… trips my Strom Thurmond alarm.
Almost Retired
@trollhattan: To that effect, there was a Op-ED by the Dean of Berkeley Law (it’s not “Boalt” anymore, right?) in the Los Angeles Times offering, basically, a template for lawyers who want to challenge the recall before the election on a constitutional basis. The argument centers, largely, on the undeniable fact that the likely vote winner (Newsom) would lose to someone with a small fraction of the total vote. I’m a lawyer and all that, but such a challenge sounds really hard and a whole lot of work. But someone less checked out and lazy may take it on.
btw, I also think you’re right that the sheer odiousness of Larry Elder may motivate Democrats who are indifferent to Newsom’s fate.
sab
@geg6: Urban, huh. No problem with that, but it isn’t my choice. Husband likes it, but it makes me want to shriek. ( Family thinks I am slightly on the autism spectrum)
Betty Cracker
@geg6: Years ago, a radio station down here actually had a jingle they’d play to announce news of grisly car crashes by elderly drivers. It went like this:
There are plenty of bad drivers in Florida, but statistically, the vast majority are from out of state. Personally, I find driving in Miami a far different experience than anywhere else in the state — much worse, IMO. Also not fond of boating down there — there’s no camaraderie.
Of all the states I’ve driven in, I’d rank Massachusetts the worst, followed by New York. I’d much rather spend the day driving around NYC than Boston, even though I am more familiar with the latter. I also recently discovered drivers in Oregon are incredibly patient!
dopey-o
i first (and last) heard that term in 1970 from a college roommate in the midwest. Don’t know where he heard it, probably from his vietnam-vet brother.
zhena gogolia
@germy:
Yeah, I didn’t read carefully (should be working) and thought this was some speculative presidential poll.
JoyceH
@Betty Cracker:
I’m afraid not. I’m usually the optimist in any group, but not this time.
Consider – Sturgis just got over. The case count in South Dakota went up 350%, so we know there was COVID infection going on there. Whether or not they gained the pre-advertised attendance of 750K, it was certainly hundreds of thousands of bikers, all gathering unmasked into crowded bars and breathing one another’s exhale. And now they’ve all gone home, taking back with them what they picked up.
They’ll find plenty of recipients for their bounty back home, even in highly vaccinated areas. Consider that if 70% of the population is vaccinated, that means 30% are not. Dry kindling for the fire.
Then there are school openings. Not all schools are open yet. The ones that have opened seemed to have outbreaks almost immediately. Mask mandates help, but keeping six year olds reliably masked all day is a herculean task, and I don’t think the student-teacher ratio is going to be able to keep up with it.
Sadly, I don’t expect the case count to start leveling off or going down for at least another month, and a lot of schools and businesses will have to close in the worst hit areas. There will be a vaccination scramble as vaccines get fully approved and more and more businesses and entertainment venues start requiring proof of vaccination. So maybe by late September things might start coming back down.
I have two ‘interact with humans’ events on my calendar this week (electricians and a car inspection, with me in KN95) and after that I’m putting myself into isolation, with no outings but grocery curbside pickup and the occasional car ride to see something beyond the fence.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
In other news, my wife’s breast cancer treatment has finally begun with surgery this morning. The machinery of breast cancer is fully in gear, and it’s kind of awesome (in the old meaning of the word) and frightening what a huge machine it is. Despite the fact that hers is early and relatively small as these things go, she had a dizzying month of medical visits and conversations with multiple MDs and facilities in the short time from mammogram to today (I think she counted 19), and is still facing radiation followed by years of medication.
And the bills (largely paid by insurance, thank heavens) have already topped $10K just for that initial pre-surgery phase.
Ksmiami
@Matt McIrvin: my bet is the denialists are waiting too long to go to the hospital and so when they do arrive it’s too late for good outcomes/also everything is at capacity
Professor Bigfoot
@Doc Sardonic:, um, I think in the context of the conversation the goodness of these Democratic governors was implied.
That they were also white supremacist shitweasels seems… unimportant in comparison to their “Democratness.”
burnspbesq
@trollhattan:
I’ve always harbored homicidal impulses toward the owners of F-350 Super Duties and Suburbans. It’s only gotten worse since I’ve been driving an electric car.
Jim Appleton
@Howard Campbell’s Soup: Curious, it’s not paywalled for me.
The gist is that four southern Oregon counties have among the highest per capita infection rates nationally, over 90% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated, health systems are overwhelmed and sending the sickest to Portland, morgues are overflowing, all the while TFG-empowered yobs, often a majority of local leadership, howl about hoax, experimental vaccines, muzzles, State gov ignores us to solidify Dem hegemony.
Oregon red blue divide is its own thing, complex and with a long history. TFG threw gasoline on that fire.
Bostondreams
@RSA:
The university where I work here in Florida (I know) said the same thing. You cannot even ASK them to wear masks, because it could be seen as associating mask wearing with grades. This includes during one on one office hours (though you can transition to virtual hours, just not classes).
Elizabelle
Listening to the press conference.
RE the press: I hate these fuckers. I have never felt like that before. They are the most simplistic “mean kids” I have ever heard.
Miss Bianca
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Wow, best of luck to your wife, and best wishes for a speedy recovery!
Elizabelle
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Wishing her all the best. Hope for a good outcome and complete cure. Traumatic enough to deal with that diagnosis without being in the midst of a pandemic too. Please keep us posted.
jonas
Same where I was from, except I think most of the RWNJs that run for school board are more like “grr, grr…taxes, fuck the teachers! Bunch of glorified, overpaid babysitters!” and go on and on about how property taxes are too high because we’re paying teachers to not work 3 months a year, etc. etc.
burnspbesq
Think it’s bad in Texas?
High school football starts this week.
trollhattan
@Betty Cracker:
“Burma Shave!”
RSA
@Bostondreams:
My sympathies, but thanks. That has a tiny bit of surface plausibility that I hadn’t thought of.
VeniceRiley
Never an end to the wonderful things one can learn by reading commenters at BJ. This is most excellent!
Ksmiami
@burnspbesq: so we are in northern NM as we bought a little getaway home but meanwhile in my Dallas neighborhood, apparently the drive thru Covid testing site is jammed. Just dumb af
Betty Cracker
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Best of luck to you both!
Bill Arnold
It’s not hyperbole to say that the freedom-to-spread-SARS-CoV-2 people are asserting that they have the right as Americans to kill arbitrary numbers of random people.
To assault the health care system with a human-wave DDoS attack.
Call out the “freedom” arguments re public health measures for the bullshit, driven by pure selfishness, that they are are.
It’s morally and logically akin to arguing that it is one’s right as an American to drive through residential neighborhoods and put bullets through random houses with a rifle. Sure, the rifle bullets will usually just do property damage, but what exactly is long-term, perhaps life-long, damage done by COVID other than damage to one’s very very personal property?
bemused senior
@lamh36: happy to hear from you! I have twin nearly 6 grand babies – it’s a beautiful age.
Doc Sardonic
@Professor Bigfoot: OK. Yes, Florida is a southern state, among the first to secede from the union, so there is the high probability that some of these governors were white supremacists, especially since I still remember separate everything due to Jim Crow and the beginning of desegregation. That wasn’t my argument, my statement was that Florida had been a reliably Democratic state for all the good and bad that entails, for years. Since that triggers your Storm Thurmond alarm, you triggered my Rose Twitter, unicorn fart huffing, purity left asshole alarm.
rikyrah
I hope that AL sees this for tomorrow’s COVID POST
My favorite explainer is back with one on Pfizer
https://twitter.com/sjs856/status/1429878788179972136?s=19
rikyrah
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
????????
Professor Bigfoot
@Doc Sardonic:, no, *white man,* I’m just reliably Black.
Take your purity unicorn and put it where it does you the most good.
Betty Cracker
So far, I like our new Ed Sec: [TPM]
I like that he acknowledged most people aren’t overjoyed to wear masks, which is true. I also like that he called out the politicization of mask requirements as an obstacle to educators who are just trying to do their damn jobs under difficult circumstances. Of course it is!
smith
@Doc Sardonic: Nothing special about Florida — all Southern states were Dem until that race traitor LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act, and Nixon saw an opening. You don’t have to be Rose Twitter to see that.
Mary G
@lamh36: Nice to see you check in. Layla Grace is adorable.
rikyrah
Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) tweeted at 11:25 AM on Mon, Aug 23, 2021:
good piece here how Biden was willing to take a political hit to do the right thing and end Forever War.
fact: Biden is the anti-Trump and the press is hanging him for it; https://t.co/7LjfgpuZOs
(https://twitter.com/EricBoehlert/status/1429842308917235722?s=03)
Jim Appleton
@Bill Arnold: I repeat a comment from a prior thread, for which I’ve requested Adam’s assistance.
First, I highly doubt the brainless goobers who are filling ICU’s and banning non-Covid treatment do so with the intent of sabotage.
Second, without much to go on it seems obvious that we are vulnerable to weaponization — literally — of disinformation by our adversaries to bring us down.
How hard would it be at this point for FSB to propagate myths which kill people, without trace and without surprise?
Nicole
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Thank you for the update. Many of us here are in the midst of the years of medication part; she should feel more than welcome to pass along any questions she might have about the experience of it. And you weren’t kidding about the bill. Just wait till you start getting the insurance statements after the radiation treatments. My eyes popped when I saw what it would’ve cost without insurance.
OGLiberal
@jonas: I worked at two outdoor concert venues in high school and college. Almost every adult who worked at either was a teacher. And most were stagehands, which is ball busting, hot, risky work.
In addition to the summer work, these folks monitored basketball games, pulled the chains during football games, worked the PA, coached, etc. They did that not only because they liked being around kids – and they did – but because they needed the cash. And that shit was the easy stuff!
I have zero patience for the lazy teacher BS.
WereBear
@lamh36: Thanks for saying hi! Glad to hear things are doing okay with you :)
Elizabelle
@Jim Appleton: What is FSB??
Jim Appleton
@Elizabelle: Russian CIA.
rikyrah
Vivian Balakrishnan (@VivianBala) tweeted at 10:20 AM on Mon, Aug 23, 2021:
Vice President @VP Kamala Harris’ call on President Halimah Yacob made history as the first meeting between the US’ first female Vice President and Singapore’s first female President. https://t.co/i3p5XWynyg
(https://twitter.com/VivianBala/status/1429825813885513731?s=03)
Elizabelle
The press conference has been settling down noticeably once they moved on from the drama llamas over Afghanistan. Over.
Kent
The last time Florida was under unified Democratic control was 1992 which was a whopping THIRTY YEARS AGO.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: Actually, I have been wondering about Black v black. I tend to use lower case. Is that offensive or wrong?
Betty Cracker
@Jim Appleton: It’s pretty clear to me that Donald Trump was the primary disease denial-weaponization vehicle in the U.S., and probably for the most stupid reasons imaginable, e.g., his orange makeup rubs off on masks and he wanted to avoid a stock market crash and so he could get reelected. The Russians might have spread disinformation to make things worse, but we obviously have a sufficient level of homegrown stupid to destroy ourselves.
Another Scott
@Jim Appleton: While waiting for Adam, my $0.02:
As I understand it, just about everything on the internet leaves breadcrumbs. This isn’t surprising because everything on the internet talks to everything else on the internet via an address. Yes, those addresses can be faked, and there’s various kinds of trickery available. But they aren’t foolproof.
If we accept that is the case, then the question is – are the available retaliation methods appropriate, or do they ultimately make the problem worse? That I can’t answer or speculate about.
https://krebsonsecurity.com/ is a good read for news about malware and phishing and the like (he doesn’t much talk about misinformation). The detective work to track these bad actors down is kinda fascinating.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
To get through most any paywall, go the web site http://www.outline.com and use it to open an ‘outline’ of the article you are trying to see. Works for me every time.
Regarding Oregon. I grew up there. Aside from the Portland metro area and the two college towns, Oregon is a sea of red and about as right wing and MAGA as rural Arkansas. It is actually much of the same exact people because rural Oregon was largely settled by Scotts-Irish immigrants traveling overland from Appalachia and the south in the wake of the Civil War. By contrast the cities like Portland were more settled by wealthy New Englanders and immigrants arriving by sea.
Kent
Current style guidance is to capitalize Black like you would also capitalize Hispanic or Asian.
Jim Appleton
@Betty Cracker: Agreed. I’m not suggesting adversaries were prime drivers, but questioning what they might have done and continue to do in deep background that exacerbates to unknown but potentially great effect. The same gooberishness you cite is one of our greatest vulnerabilities.
Doc Sardonic
@Kent: Yeah, no shit. I live in Florida, didn’t mention the legislature or whether party control was split or unified.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim Appleton:
Not hard.
Ken
@Kent: However, white is not similarly capitalized. I sometimes think that may be another example of it being the “default” setting.
Sure Lurkalot
@Betty Cracker: I think the Trump mask thing is 100% whatever he spreads, backfills and grades on to his hideous mug.
sab
@Kent: Who does the style guides?
dr. luba
@trollhattan: I was exposed to delta on July 31st by my idiot unvaccinated neighbors–short chat outdoors. No one in the neighborhood would have guessed they weren’t vaxxed. The MAGAt down the street flying his Trump flag–sure. But an UMC educated couple and their HS/college grad daughters?
I became symptomatic 4 days later, despite being fully vaccinated (Pfizer) since January. Today is the first day I have felt even remotely normal. The COVID didn’t get into my lungs, and I didn’t need treatment or hospitalization, but I had viral symptoms, followed by GI symptoms, followed by weakness/fatigue/anorexia.
I lost 2.5 weeks of my life, a quarter of my income for the month, and may have sequelae down the line…..who knows?
I can only imagine if I wasn’t vaccinated……
Steeplejack
@Howard Campbell’s Soup:
The site software does not like apostrophes in nyms, so every comment of yours will have to be approved by a front-pager. If you change your nym to take it out or replace it (maybe *) you need to get approved only once.
Betty Cracker
@Ken: Whether or not the lowercase implies that “white” is default was a big issue when the AP style guidance changed to capitalize “Black” but not “white.” IIRC, the rationale was that “Black” denotes a shared culture whereas “white” does not.
rikyrah
@dr. luba:
Glad to know that you are doing better.
Need to protect ourselves from the lying unvaccinated.
sab
@dr. luba: Yikes. I mask everywhere and I don’t care who it offends.
But I still have a deep rage against unvaxxed. Deep, deep rage. Well beyond their ” fuck your feelings.”
They don’t care if they kill me or mine. I won’t ever forget. I’m in my sixties. Some of my anti-vax anti-mask neighbors are in their forties. It’s going to be a long time until I am dead and gone, and my step-son is getting the house afterwards. We know who they are. No more neighborliness after they tried to kill us.
Kent
@Doc Sardonic: This thread is about the actions of STATE officials. Florida has been under unified Republican state control (governor and both houses of the legislature) since about 1998. The last Democratic governor was Lawton Chiles who died in 1998 and the last time the Democrats held either house in the state legislature was 1996. That was 25 years ago.
So tell us again how Florida is a “reliably Democratic state”
lowtechcyclist
@Albatrossity:
Mine is ‘traitor.’
Anyone sacrificing the lives of Americans for no cause other than their political futures has betrayed their country, pure and simple.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, …
Good, good.
We’re not doomed. Forward!!
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
But if you are going to write in any forum or for any audience where conservatives or trolls frequent you are best advised to be consistent in your capitalization of “Black and “White” one way or the other. Otherwise they will pounce and flip out.
Kent
The AP, Chicago Manual of Style, MLA, etc.
sab
@Kent: That is kind of my issue. Why trust them when we can’t trust their hiring?
ETA: I kind of want a jackal commenter opinion.
smith
@Jim Appleton: I’ve been wondering if Russia didn’t shoot itself in the foot with this particular disinformation campaign. It would be a mistake to think Russians are shielded from whatever nonsense starts rattling around the web, and the Russian bots may very well have contributed to this:
(from June)
I haven’t found a more recent cite about Russian vax resistance, but I recall they pop up pretty regularly on AL’s morning Covid threads. One World In Data says that only about 23% of the population there is fully vaccinated.
trollhattan
@dr. luba: Wow, eye-popping. (And I would be so pissed.)
Very glad you’re on the mend but that’s a heavy set of symptoms for somebody who’s vaccinated. Cautionary tale.
Jim Appleton
@smith: Disregard/contempt for local/native safety and desire for military dominance are not mutually exclusive.
sab
@smith: CDC and FDA taking a long time makes sense. My late Jewish father in law from Ukraine had a saying : trust is like the soul. Once it is gone it doesn’t come back. He said it in the context of spousal cheating. Works also for govt agencies.
Betty Cracker
@Kent: I had that same thought when I read about the change. Not that I think shitheads who freak out about that sort of thing should be catered to, but I do wonder if the AP’s decision was the right one. Convention changes that seem inconsistent or require a lengthy explanation are generally to be avoided, IMO, mainly because they’re distracting. Also, is the claim that there’s no such thing as “white” culture in America true? Maybe, but I don’t think that’s self-evidently true.
trollhattan
@Kent: AP and Chicago are my go-tos. My kid has used APA since high school and that remains the case in college.
Because I have no life I have A:Bd AP editions to find changes. Always interesting, the continual evolution of English, American English especially.
trollhattan
@smith: “I am strong, like Russian bear. Virus is weak and lazy, like typical American. {patooey}”
J R in WV
@lamh36:
Great to hear from you, and that your nieces are doing well also too!! I know you are so proud of them you’re like to bust, and that’s good and proper!
We’re doing OK too.
I'll be Frank
@OGLiberal:
give it time, you’ll get that up to B-J standards and remember, amusement follows disgust
Doc Sardonic
@Kent: Actually, the last Democratic Governor of Florida Was Buddy McKay. Nowhere, in any of my statements, did I say that Florida was currently a reliably Democratic state, but in the now distant past it was. I believe that the trigger that started the cascade toward the party control flip, was when the schools completely desegregated and according to my memory during the late 70’s around the energy crisis days at the end of Jimmy Carter’s term it really picked up steam. Locally, we started seeing more Republicans running for office, then running and winning. People that I knew for years as Democrats started to switch parties. This all happened well after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act and the initial Dixiecrat exodus.
Ken
@smith: The Russians must be doing something right. Unlike every other country, their COVID case and death numbers do not show exponential growth. Indeed, both sets of numbers remain within very narrow ranges, except for roughly once-a-month events where they jump to a slightly higher, but still narrow, range.
(And we need a convention for indicating “sarcasm posing as wide-eyed innocence”.)
Baud
@lamh36:
It’s good to see you.
germy
https://www.wfla.com/news/sarasota-county/94-sarasota-sheriffs-office-employees-out-with-covid-related-symptoms-60-test-positive/
germy
sab
OT off topic. My husband is singing to himself right now. His mom and sisters were both great singers. Him not so much. Rhythmically exteremely challenged. Tonally a lot challenged. He sings a song and I have no idea what he is referring to.
Sorry to shut him down, but Jeez. That isn’t even music
ETA I think he loved music as a cultural thing his family enjoyed, because God knows he has no concept of actual music.
Baud
LGM
Baud
@germy:
DefundInfect the police.Elizabelle
@Ken:
It’s this:
//
BC in Illinois
Missouri.
From the Facebook page of Dennis Newberry – Mayor of Lake Ozark:
We will leave the punctuation and “hail merry pass” without comment. But here is a comment worth I thought was worth passing along:
germy
Elizabelle
@BC in Illinois: LOL. “Mayor of Lake Ozark.”
I bet it’s got sharks. Or just one really big one.
Old School
@germy:
Well, at least he’s coming to the realization a lot of us did years ago.
Ken
It’s not a shark attack, man.
germy
https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2021/08/23/corporate-sponsor-pulls-arnold-classic-after-schwarzenegger-comments/8241226002/
Following Arnold Schwarzenegger’s comments about the importance of wearing face masks earlier this month, corporate sponsor REDCON1 pulled out from this year’s Arnold Classic.
Ramalama
@Betty Cracker: Masschusetts is indeed the worst place to drive. I have driven in most major cities easily compared with the paved over cow paths called Massachusetts roads. Drove cross country, MA to Arizona a few times. Chicago to Denver. Chicago to Oklahoma City. New York City plenty of times (though the tolls kill me). And so on. Little Boston town MA is filled with Napoleons. So many of them.
Took me a few years to ‘get’ driving in Boston, south shore, north shore. Had to practice zen driving so that I wouldn’t burn out another clutch from inherited road rage. Yes, call me Napoleon.
Friend of mine moved from MA to California for a fellowship. Returned a few years later and noted the extreme costs in comparison for car insurance, perfect driving record.
JaySinWa
@trollhattan:
I had an email yesterday from an older vaccinated friend who just got out of a 3 day hospital stay with Covid Pneumonia. He’s looking at a 20 day post hospital treatment plan.
germy
@Ken:
Police don’t like the covid vaccine. If the covid vaccine could drive a car, they’d pull it over and take their time checking its license.
West of the Rockies
@Betty Cracker:
Isn’t White now used to suggest supremacist beliefs? Thus, I am white; Steve Bannon is White.
MomSense
@Ken:
s/?
germy
@Old School:
There’s always something more to the story with Jones, though. His cohost is under arrest for participating in the insurrection. I wonder if Jones is developing a personal grudge against TFG.
sab
@Baud: I am game with that. Ain’t vaxed, fuck them or infect them.
Kent
@Ramalama: But have you driven in Miami? Betty Cracker is right. In Miami it isn’t so much the elderly drivers. It’s young Haitians, Brazilians, Venezuelans, etc. blasting around sans license in questionable vehicles like they are still in Sao Paulo or Caracas.
Elizabelle
@germy: Now breaking news on your FLA8 link: A Polk County deputy, 32 year old male, has just died of Covid after weeks of hospitalization.
Elizabelle
@Kent: Yeah. Miami nerves me out.
rikyrah
@germy:
And, so many of the Police Unions are coming out against mandatory vaccinations.
Uh huh
Uh huh
zhena gogolia
trollhattan
@BC in Illinois:
“Since my drains are clogged and my sinuses are clogged with this Covid, it’s Liquid Plumber all around!”
Steeplejack
@dr. luba:
I hope you gave your neighbors a stern talking-to (at least).
Betty Cracker
@Kent: I’ve driven in Miami plenty, and it sucks donkey balls, but Boston is the worst. The. Worst.
James E Powell
@Kent:
Right. Pre-FOX News & before Limbaugh because the central voice of the Republican Party
trollhattan
@rikyrah: Yeah, what the actual hell. Prison guards (natch), police, even firefighters are protesting mandatory vaccinations. Do you motherfuckers not remember when you were shoved to the front of the vaccine line on account of being first responders? Where was your bitching back then? “Oh, save my life? No way, I’m stepping aside for grannie here. Please ma’am, have mine.”
NotoriousJRT
Friend in Tampa into 3rd week of hospitalization – J&J but maybe exposed before fully protected. Can’t sleep and can’t breathe without high flow O2. Covid pneumonia. That he is not improving is deeply worrying.
germy
@rikyrah:
It really shows what sort of media they consume and where they are on the political spectrum, doesn’t it.
West of the Rockies
@sab:
Personally,I’d not tell him to pipe down. Private singing reflects joy or serves some other useful psychological and emotional purpose. Obviously, YMMV. My fiancée has an adult son who sings (and is dreadful). I usually mutter to myself where I won’t be heard and/or leave the area.
I don’t know why I’m bothering to share my very subjective view. You have my (useless) sympathy though.
J R in WV
@Mary G:
AW, Grace — I missed that great old name. My grandma was Grace! So sweet to see it coming back.
trollhattan
@germy:
Hah. Even if he didn’t have more money then god “dan gott” he’ll still say “sayonara, losers.” Arnold does not suffer fools.
Betty Cracker
@West of the Rockies: Never heard that, but it doesn’t surprise me. I wonder if white supremacists started capitalizing the W in response to AP, et al., capitalizing the B? Or is that a long-term practice?
RSA
@BC in Illinois:
Hale, merry—how cheerful!
hueyplong
@germy: Are you sure you want to be known for being able to follow along with Jones’ “reasoning?”
Ken
@rikyrah: COVID was the leading cause of on-duty death for police in 2020, responsible for over 50% of the deaths. It’s on track to repeat for this year. Union opposition to vaccination is… insane? Stupid? Criminal?
Though I’m not entirely sure how it counts as an “on-duty” death, since presumably the officers were in the hospital for a week or six before they died.
germy
I’m worried about all the wormy horses who won’t have access to the medicine they need.
“Sorry, we’re all sold out. Come back next week. And don’t give me that long face.”
sab
@West of the Rockies: I would never tell him to pipe down. It would break his heart.
no comment
@germy:
From the article you linked:
I notice the precautions didn’t include masking or getting vaccinated.
trollhattan
Please note, if Larry Elder were in charge* what this couple did would be just fine–it’s just how the labor relationship was worked out between owner and workers.
*Not kidding even one bit.
trollhattan
@germy: “Horse walks into a bar…”
Another Scott
@Betty Cracker: On my first trip to Boston to visit J’s folks, we were exiting the bumper-to-bumper tunnel from the airport and some guy bumped our rear bumper like he was in a bumper car, worked his way around us, and kept going. Like it was normal, what are you looking at anyway, huh?
I haven’t seen anything like that elsewhere.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Haven’t been to Miami though. ;-)
Cheers,
Scott.
smith
@BC in Illinois: And of course when those snooty elitist doctors and nurses at the hospital won’t let him deworm his friend, and the friend dies, it will be only because he didn’t get ivermectin!
Elizabelle
@no comment: I noticed that very issue with the FDA alert on not using horse dewormer to treat Covid.
Why You Should Not Use Ivermectin to Treat or Prevent COVID-19
Vaccination not listed at all. Why, why, why, FDA?? Why the reticence in messaging??
Splitting Image
Chiming in to thank Betty for the word “pricklouse”. I plan to use it more in conversation.
Baud
LGM (Cheryl)
CaseyL
@Ken:
I’m having trouble seeing this as a bad thing. If they’re anti-vax/anti-masks, chances are they’re lousy cops. So by getting Covid and being hospitalized/dying, they’re effectively de-funding themselves.
Fine with me.
Kent
On-duty as in active police officers when they caught Covid rather than say….retirees.
Not on-duty as in they croaked in their patrol cars.
Betty Cracker
@Another Scott: I still have nightmares about that damn tunnel! And merging! Fuhgeddaboudit! If you don’t scrape paint, you ain’t getting in the lane!
Miami is a different kind of terror, e.g., aggressive high-speed tailgating, even if you’re going 90 MPH in the right lane. But I’ll take that any day over Boston.
Weirdly, boating in Miami is the absolute worst, whereas it’s not bad in Boston.* I guess the rocks weed out the worst boaters in the Northeast.
*Due to the behavior of fellow boaters, I mean. Both places are well worth exploring from the water!
sab
@no comment: Pretty hard not to touch your face or eyes or nose if not masked. Everyone thinks masking is all about protective cloth layers. A lot of it is keeping you from putting paws all over your face at work or while shopping.
Wear your mask. Get home. Unpack your stuff. Wash your hands. Remove your mask. Unmask your face. Then wash your hands again. It’s okay. Your hands won’t fall off if you wash them a bit too much.
Elizabelle
@CaseyL: Catherine Rampell shares your views. Her column in the WaPost a few days ago.
Good riddance to all the anti-vax police officers
Elizabelle
Unstated by Catherine Rampell: since so much of the anti-vaxx disinformation comes straight from Fox and worse wingnut sites, the sooner you clear out their adherents, the better. Some of it probably comes from our adversaries, and people who can not see past this crap should not be running around with a license to kill.
We can all sleep better, breathe better, live better.
H.E.Wolf
It’s very silly, and the Eeeevil Villain’s plot is preposterous – if you’re in the mood for that, it’ll be part of its charm. :)
Geminid
@Doc Sardonic: The southern party realignment proceeded at different paces within the the region. In Virginia, it largely took place in the 1970’s, when the dominant Byrd machine threw it’s weight into the Republican party. But in rural areas, conservative Democrats like Congressman Dan Daniels (of Danville!) held on for over a decade. Nelson County south of Charlottesville voted Democratic into this century. But now rural Virginia is red and will remain red for the forseeable future.
The Virginia suburbs hold the balance of power now, and Republicans are losing ground in this battlefied. In 2018, Jennifer Wexton, Abigail Spanberger, and Elaine Luria flipped the largely suburban 10th, 7th, and 2nd Districts. This was a national trend; Democrats flipped suburban districts in South Carolina Georgia, Kansas, and Texas as well as several in suburban California (the South Carolina seat flipped back last year).
Florida politically is a very singular state, and the dynamic in other states does not neccessarily apply. But Democrats Stephanie Murphy and Charlie Crist flipped suburban Florida seats in the last decade. And the balance of power statewide has been close. Gerrymandering has made the state legislature red, but Republican Governors won the last three elections by 60,000, 66,000, and less than 40,000 votes. The last result was out of over 8 million votes cast.
Quiltingfool
@Elizabelle:
LOL. “Mayor of Lake Ozark.” I bet it’s got sharks. Or just one really big one.
I know Lake Ozark. No sharks, just the Strip – the road that goes over Bagnell Dam. They got rid of all the family fun stuff, like bumper cars, skee ball, things kids like to do and now they have some cha-cha restaurants, several biker bars and stores that cater to people who go to those places!
A couple of weeks ago, a murder (victim was a member of a motorcycle club) happened in one of the biker bars – powers to be wanted to cancel the upcoming biker rally because of the rumor that some motorcycle clubs were going to rumble. Didn’t happen as business folk would lose money. COVID is ignored here, no surprise, this is Republican Central.
I have a feeling the Mayor of Lake Ozark takes his marching orders from folk much higher on the food chain.
Dan B
@sab: We lived in 5 acres of woods outside Wadsworth, with 90 more acres behind of old growth missing only the Oaks. I don’t remember seeing blue sky to the horizon except below 15 degrees until we visited Colorado and after I
movedescaped to Seattle. There are stories about the early white settlers traveling through Ohio’s dark forests for days, filled with despair at lack of light or a wisp of breeze.Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I mainly drive in Virginia, where the drivers seem average. But when I’ve visited Atlanta I have been impressed by the drivers. There is a hellava lot of merging going on, especially on the Connector that carries I-85 and I-75 though downtown. Drivers generally seem to yield to other cars as they dart like chipmunks from lane to lane, or swoop like swallows across two or three. This may be a manifestation of Atlanta’s ethos, “the City Too Busy to Hate.”
It still takes me a couple minutes to relax my grip on the steering wheel when I get to my destination, though.
Dan B
@Jim Appleton: I thought Oregon would send excess patients to WA / Seattle but we’re reaching capacity, most likely from Eastern and Central WA. Yakima County is a large hot spot and south of Seattle – Tacoma metro, Kent – is bad as well.
Dan B
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: Tough news but the good news is breat cancer treatment has improved enormously in the past couple decades, at least according to friends.
Chris Johnson
@Jim Appleton: Not just us.
Germany’s got a ton of QAnon, antivax hysteria. Note the location and significance of Germany. I’ve been saying it for a long time: there’s a certain country that is fool enough to think they benefit from a crapload of terrible things: global warming, pandemic, etc etc.
And they’ve turned in all their bombs and missiles for the more fertile ground of global internet trolling and seizing control of the narrative, and spent a LOT of money and energy doing it.
Bill Arnold
@trollhattan:
Virus is a small obligate intracellular parasite that parasitizes cells that express ACE2.
It is competent at that.
It does not know anything, but if it did, it would not know or care much about the rest of the human superorganisms.
Kayla Rudbek
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: yeah, this is familiar. I still have to go yell at the anesthesiologist’s billing – they are claiming past due bill and I think that they submitted it to the wrong insurance policy as the insurance company billing name was different from what I currently have.
boatboy_srq
@Earl:
Y’all are forgetting that this is Floriduh. Unless you’re a Disney exec, specialized physician, or attorney in the eldercare or finance fields, starvation wages are the norm, and it’s likely that paying school boards is necessary to ensure that the board members survive.
When I moved there, the difference between my CA salary and the median for my role (yes I was below median) was roughly the same as the difference between median in CA and median in FL. I thought I would break even. Instead I took a 40% cut in compensation.
That same year there was a vacancy in Tampa Bay for a network engineer; the ad stipulated that a successful candidate was required to hold a CCIE (that’s Cisco Certified Internetworking Expert; at the time holders of that very-elite cert numbered about 200 on the planet, and could write their own tickets). They were offering a whole $60k.
What was I making? Systems admin: $42K. Director of IT and Operations: $55k. Florida salaries are shyte.
And the residents don’t get it. When I moved North, they all said “don’t go there; they tax.” OK, so I’m paying 6% in state income tax, and a couple hundred in personal property. I took a demotion, a loss of staff, loss of signing authority, loss of projects, fewer hours. I doubled my salary doing it. I’m currently two steps below my last FL title and making triple what I made there even in adjusted dollars. And every single recurring bill – utilities, car insurance, groceries, rent – all remained constant or dropped significantly. I will pay 6% in state income tax for that. Staying in FL is an exercise in voluntary poverty (sorry, Betty, that’s just my experience).
Another Scott
@boatboy_srq: Good story; glad you were able to make the move.
Too many people don’t seem to realize that societies don’t thrive by not spending money. They thrive by spending money, lots of money, and they thrive by having big government (because only government can regulate things like use of the public airwaves and public water and sewer systems and airports and highways and electric grids and all the other trappings of a prosperous safe society) that means that taxes are necessary.
Burundi has pretty low taxes…
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
Sam
I did my own analysis of the most recent NYT data to compare state trends against national trends, focusing on deaths. If Florida were simply at the national trend, it would avoid 70% of its current deaths per day. It is joined in this infamy by Louisiana, Mississippi and Arkansas.
In fact, if I were to make a dirty dozen, it would be, in order of infamy:
Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Arkansas, Alabama, South Carolina, Nevada, Kansas, Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, Wyoming. All these states, if they were simply to follow the national trend, could avoid at least 21% of the death from COVID in the state.
It is in the nature of trends that someone has to be a loser. but these states account for 60% of the deaths nationally. In fact, the top 4 – Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and Arkansas, account for 32% of the national death total. Florida is responsible for 21.5% of the total national deaths, 70% of which are avoidable with reasonable policy.