Six weeks after the first COVID-19 vaccines were authorized for emergency use, Massachusetts — celebrated as a national health care leader — ranks in the bottom half of US states in getting injections into the arms of its residents.
Massachusetts trails every other New England state, as well as New York, in the number of vaccine doses administered per capita, according to federal figures. Less than 5.4 percent of Massachusetts residents had been inoculated as of Friday, compared to 8 percent of residents in Connecticut, over 10 percent in West Virginia, and 11 percent in Alaska.
A Globe review suggests that a combination of technical problems, unexpected rates of resistance by health workers to taking the vaccine, and policy choices — including a decision to start vaccinating nursing home workers and staff a week later than four other New England states — conspired to set Massachusetts back coming out of the gate, and there are warning signs that the state could face more logistical obstacles as the vaccination campaign moves to much larger populations starting in February.
That's the turn-in area, and there it is.
Things that don't have a conscience or motivation "conspired" to hold "us" back.
That's how my reading experience began this morning, can you imagine?
Unlike some other states, Massachusetts has no central place where people can sign up for injections, confusing and frustrating a growing number of residents hoping to be immunized against the raging virus.
The case counts are dropping according to their own reports, but don't let that spoil the overarching narrative for you.
It’s clear that vaccinating 5.8 million adult residents in the midst of a crippling pandemic is one of the most challenging assignments that Massachusetts officials have ever faced, and the federal government has made the task harder with its lack of guidance and unpredictable allocations and shipments, but every other state faces similar hurdles, and Massachusetts’ highly rated hospitals — accounting for two thirds of all doses thus far administered — have struggled to efficiently schedule shots and make sure no doses go unused. Only about 43 percent of doses shipped to Massachusetts have been administered, federal data show. Even at Mass General Brigham, the state’s largest hospital system, which has used 79 percent of its doses, nearly 13,500 doses were sitting on freezer shelves last week.
The slow start has alarmed many in the state who see immunization as key to ending the pandemic, fueling calls for the Baker administration to ramp up its vaccination program.
“If we don’t do something really quick, and fast, and soon, we will end up still having to provide doses at the end of this year,” warned Bill Walczak, a Boston community activist who founded the Codman Square Health Center and is a former president of Steward Carney Hospital in Dorchester.
State officials said their vaccine program is on track.
Pathological liars who can f**k off.
Governor Charlie Baker unveiled several steps last week to speed up injections, including plans to launch a second mass vaccination site at Fenway Park, slated to open Feb. 1, in addition to the one now operating at Gillette Stadium. The state also expanded its network of local injection sites to more than 150, and said CVS and Walgreens — pharmacies that run vaccine clinics at long-term care sites — eventually will stock vaccines at retail outlets for the general public. “The Commonwealth will keep opening more sites in all regions of the state to make sure that everybody has access to a site that’s convenient to them,” Baker said Thursday.
His complex three-phase vaccination plan, developed with health leaders, does not lay out specific targets for the number of vaccine doses to be administered in January and coming months. State officials say that hinges on factors outside their control, such as federal orders for shipments, but the lack of specific goals makes measuring the program’s progress difficult.
Baker is hoping federal cooperation will improve under the new Biden administration. President Biden signed several executive actions Thursday to launch his COVID-19 strategy, promising “immediate steps” to partner with governors to streamline the vaccine rollout. Among other things, the Federal Emergency Management Agency will designate a point person to work with every state and will open up to 100 federally run mass vaccination sites, but some logistics experts say Massachusetts officials need to change as well, by showing more willingness to set clear vaccination goals, being more flexible, embracing best practices from elsewhere, and acting with more urgency.....
The expert he talks to is Retsef Levi, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Sloan School of Management, and the rest is yours, and FEMA is in charge, huh?
I need the reader to understand something, and that is the whole shortage and glitchy rollout is a cover for the fact that no one wants their poisons.
I'm beginning to wonder if this whole vaccine scare was a diversion. From reading the Globe since Biden usurped office, one gets the feeling they are backing off this part of the project. It's not like they haven't dumped vaccines before, and all the $$$ has been made.
Furthermore, the crushing of the economy is practically complete and the Great Reset project is prodding apace as my pre$$ can attest.
I know, I know, "conspiracy."
Related:
"If you are Black or Latino and living in Suffolk County, you are more likely to have to travel farther than white residents for a coveted dose of the COVID-19 vaccine, a Globe analysis has found. “Once again, we are in the back of the line and we are forgotten and neglected,” said Dinanyili Paulino, chief operating officer of the Chelsea-based nonprofit La Colaborativa, which operates a food pantry serving thousands of residents a week. White residents remain overwhelmingly the beneficiaries of the state’s vaccines....."
They can have all of mine, and the uptake suggest they are far from coveted.
This is the kind of weasel wording, along with "raging virus," that is prevalent in the pages of propaganda called a paper.
Also see:
"Two patients, one week in the hospital, and a world of change" by Hanna Krueger Globe Staff, January 23, 2021
On the day an angry mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol, Bertha Bailey was showing off pictures of a bear that had climbed the steps of her Charlton home this summer and taken a seat. “I wanted to invite him in, but my daughter wouldn’t let me,” the 81-year-old Army veteran said with mock disappointment.
I just throw my hands up because, you know, that's a distortion of what occurred during that staged and scripted event.
She sat on the edge of her bed in the COVID-19 unit of the West Roxbury VA Medical Center, fingers dashing across her smartphone. The phone buzzed away, not with alerts from news stations, but texts from her five children wondering how she was feeling.
“Oh for cripes sake, let me have a moment,” she scolded the screen.
Down the hall in the same unit, the television in Al Chapski’s room played CNN on low volume. As the anchors grew pale with outrage describing the riot in Washington, the 92-year-old reminisced about his childhood in Boston’s West End, full of boxing matches and Celtics games, and his yearly trips down to West Palm Beach, where he and his wife had planned to be this winter before being sickened by the virus. His vitals beeped steady, and all he really wanted was a Coke.
That's where was the turn-in, so you can't say I'm not giving them a chance and one would hope we are getting some inside investigative reporting here. I care as much about our beloved elders as I do the kids.
As at other hospitals, time had taken on a different dimension in 2-North, the designated COVID-19 unit at the West Roxbury VA for cases that require observation but don’t currently merit intensive care intervention. While in Washington members of Congress readied gas masks, in West Roxbury a veteran with dementia wandered the hallways of the floor. Most of the small white televisions were tuned to an old action movie on TNT. Even on such a historic day, the unit hummed onward. 2-North was just a chapter in the patients’ otherwise vibrant lives, but COVID-19 is nothing if not relentless, and as so often happens with this illness, the quiet rhythms on that Wednesday betrayed the dangers still to come.
Within a week, Bertha Bailey would be bedridden and breathless in an intensive care unit. Al Chapski, whose kind chestnut eyes once gleamed with nostalgia, wouldn’t make it. He took his last, labored breath the night of Jan. 13.
One can't help but notice the age and ask about co-morbidities, especially considering the environment.
I'm not trying to be cold, I'm just tired of the agenda-pushing agents of propaganda pulling at heartstrings, be it the CV $cam or waving women and children at us in service to aggressive acts of war.
***
This story began like so many other “day in the life” tales. A Boston Globe reporter and photographer were given permission to embed in the VA unit for 24 hours. It just so happened their first shift inside fell on the day of the insurrection, the biggest news story of the new year, but the promise of that day in early January would not last. Five new COVID-19 patients arrived through the night after an outbreak in the oncology unit. Any plans to close down the third wing were promptly dismissed.
I think I am ready to check out, but I leave this and the link for more to you:
***
A week later, on the day the House of Representatives was impeaching Donald Trump for a second time, the Globe returned to the hospital and found Bertha Bailey’s name, improbably, still on the whiteboard, though her room was empty. She’d gone home Thursday as planned, but her pulse oximeter, a device that measures the amount of oxygen in the blood, had registered a dangerous drop over the weekend. Her daughter — who had also been hospitalized with COVID-19 a week prior — drove her mother back to West Roxbury.
Bertha isn’t the type of woman to show weakness. “She’s the glue that holds our family together in times of crisis,” said her granddaughter Gabby, but on the hourlong trip, the matriarch of the Bailey family began to crack. She dwelled on a list of events she feared she may not live to see: A granddaughter due in the spring. Gabby’s wedding, postponed to later in 2021.
She was readmitted to 2-North, but her condition deteriorated so drastically she was moved upstairs to the intensive care unit tasked with caring for the most critical of COVID-19 patients. She remained there for a week, before stepping down to 2-North again. A day later, her sister, who had been living in a long-term care facility, died from COVID-19.
On the other side of 2-North, Al Chapski’s door was closed and his eyes were shut. There was no more happy talk of childhood. Before being stricken with coronavirus, Chapski’s wife said, he “never had so much as a headache.” Now, his chest rose slowly in shallow breaths. The television that once ran CNN on loop had gone black. By nightfall, the virus had overcome the 92-year-old and he died.
Who stuck the sick people in there?
Or were these just inevitable from old age?
I'm just asking because I know my pre$$ doesn't tell me the truth about anything.
It's half a story, usually, with false opposition masquerading as debate.
The nurses gathered his belongings. A sprawling life of more than nine decades textured by second-chance romance, cruise trips, Market Basket doughnuts and a love of World War II aircraft was reduced, in that moment, to a plastic bag filled with a picture frame, a pair of hearing aids, a plant in a disposable cup, a pile of clothes, and a $100 Starbucks gift card.
Somewhere in the hospital, a doctor phoned Clare Chapski — who had not seen her husband since Dec. 22, the day she dropped him off at the emergency room “to see what was going on” — to inform her she was now a widow.
I, you know, I really, sigh.
Normally when a veteran dies at the West Roxbury VA Medical Center, an American flag is draped atop the transport gurney that carries them to the morgue. The same seasoned Old Glory is used throughout the hospital, a symbol of the fraternity and sacrifice of the veteran’s service, but now, when a patient dies in 2-North, a plastic American Flag themed tablecloth — the kind seen at tailgates on the Fourth of July — is plucked from a stack and flattened across the top of the gurney.
Time to check back in:
It’s a necessary adjustment for infection control, but it’s another reminder of the dignity that the disease robs from its victims, who often spend their final days alone, confused, and in sterile hospital rooms, cared for by masked nurses whose smiles they’ll never see.
When Al Chapski’s gurney disappeared through the metal door, his nurse started to cry. Tears streamed under her face shield and collided with her mask. Brynn Chevalier, the lead nurse who’d stayed after her shift to see Chapski off, placed a gloved hand on the sleeve of her colleague’s surgical gown. Another nurse reminded her gently not to touch her eyes. Though the staff had received the first dose of the vaccine, COVID-19 threatened to infect them even as they mourned.
WTF?
If the vaccine doesn't prevent infection, then what the hell good is it and what is it really, huh?
A new patient had arrived in the room where Bertha’s one-woman comedy show had unfolded a week prior. The veteran was FaceTiming his family. His daughter sang a slow rendition of “You Are My Sunshine” before passing the phone to her mother.
“Don’t fall asleep on me. I want to say goodnight to you. OK?” pleaded the woman on the other side of the phone. “I love you. You’re the best husband, best dad, and best grandpa anybody ever had, and we all love you so much. OK? I miss you. I’ll let you go to sleep. I miss you. Goodnight.”
The cycle had begun again in 2-North, where most people now come and go because, after a year living with the virus, so much more is understood about how to save them, but others still come there to die. Even after all this time, the virus too often wins.
Or Father Time, and I think I'm going to be sick.
Five days later, on the eve of the anniversary of the first recorded COVID-19 case in America, the nation would record its 400,000th death. All the while the world spun madly on.....
UPDATE:
The next day the Globe ran heartbreaking elegies for a 92-year-old, a 91-year-old, an 83-year-old, and some other guy, all dead from CV as is every death now.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I flipped below the fold and found it was time go shopping!
"For brick and mortar retailers, it’s boom or bust, depending on where you look" by Janelle Nanos Globe Staff, January 23, 2021
Legions of Boston’s office workers left town when the pandemic broke out. When they return, they’ll find its streetscapes profoundly transformed.
Wander the city’s corridors of commerce and you’ll witness darkened storefronts and shuttered restaurants. These are the casualties of a pandemic that has hit the retail world unevenly. A tour of the region’s shopping hubs offers a complex look at street life now that holiday shoppers have retreated, with one new reality starkly clear: Urban shopping districts are in dire shape right now, while the situation is more nuanced in the suburbs.
Yes, the pandemic has hastened the demise of traditional malls, but at open-air shopping complexes — those suburban “lifestyle centers” where the word “mall” is verboten — commerce has not only carried on, it’s booming. Parking lots are full. Lines snake out of stores.....
That is when I stopped window shopping as the “pandemic broke a lot of backs, it’s really bad,” but at least the flagship Microsoft store, positioned at a high-profile spot in the center of the Prudential mall, is shuttered.
So how are those contract negotiations going, Jan?
They break you yet?
BREAKING NEWS:
Going to be opening up February 1st, a mere 11 days after the inauguration of the new regime.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
"Justice Department, FBI debate not charging some of the Capitol rioters" by Devlin Barrett and Spencer S. Hsu The Washington Post, January 23, 2021
Going to let the antifa agent provocateurs off, huh?
WASHINGTON - Federal law enforcement officials are privately debating whether they should decline to charge some of the individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol this month - a politically loaded proposition but one alert to the practical concern that hundreds of such cases could swamp the local courthouse.
The internal discussions are in their early stages, and no decisions have been reached about whether to forgo charging some of those who illegally entered the Capitol on Jan. 6, according to multiple people familiar with the discussions.
This fits in line with the standard propaganda playbook. Gin something up for two weeks, then let it slide in third and onto the next psyop.
Get ready for the roller coaster.
Justice Department officials have promised a relentless effort to identify and arrest those who stormed the Capitol that day, but internally there is robust back-and-forth about whether charging them all is the best course of action. That debate comes at a time when officials are keenly sensitive that the credibility of the Justice Department and the FBI are at stake in such decisions, given the apparent security and intelligence failures that preceded the riot, these people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss legal deliberations.
OMFG!
Yeah, how do they do a CYOA bit?
That's why they want to drop charges. You find out the police and authorities LIHOPed it.
Beyond that, how can they be sensitive to something they don't have and how can that be at stake?
Federal officials estimate that roughly 800 people surged into the building, though they caution that such numbers are imprecise, and the real figure could be 100 people or more in either direction.
Among those roughly 800 people, FBI agents and prosecutors have so far seen a broad mix of behavior - from people dressed for military battle, moving in formation, to wanton vandalism, to simply going with the crowd into the building.
Due to the wide variety of behavior, some federal officials have argued internally that those people who are known only to have committed unlawful entry - and were not engaged in violent, threatening or destructive behavior - should not be charged, according to people familiar with the discussions.
Other agents and prosecutors have pushed back against that suggestion, arguing that it is important to send a forceful message that the kind of political violence and mayhem on display Jan. 6 needs to be punished to the full extent of the law, so as to discourage similar conduct in the future.
There are a host of other factors complicating the discussions, many of which center not around the politics of the riot, but the real-world work of investigators and prosecutors, these people said.
The Justice Department has already charged more than 135 individuals with committing crimes in or around the Capitol building, and many more are expected to be charged in the coming weeks and months. By mid-January, the FBI had already received more than 200,000 tips from the public about the riot, in addition to news footage and police officer testimony.
The primary objective for authorities is to determine which individuals, if any, planned, orchestrated or directed the violence. To that end, the FBI has already found worrying linkages within such extremist groups as the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters, and is looking to see if those groups coordinated with each other to storm the building, according to people familiar with the investigation.
I'm highlighting all this crap and not commenting because it's awful. They are pushing political persecution like true communists, and I'm totally disgusted with the pre$$ these days.
As for planning, orchestrating, and directing violence, exhibit A is all the Iraq war lies that barred from the front pages of papers so FUCK OFF!
You people are shit.
Prosecutors have signaled they are looking to bring charges of seditious conspiracy against anyone who planned and carried out violence aimed at the government - a charge that carries a maximum possible prison sentence of 20 years, but even as Justice Department officials look to bring those types of cases, they privately acknowledge those more determined and dangerous individuals may have operated within a broader sea of people who rushed through the doors but didn't do much else, and prosecutors will ultimately have to decide if all of those lesser offenders should be charged.
Officials insisted they are not under pressure in regards to timing of decisions about how to handle those type of cases. For one thing, investigators are still gathering evidence, and agents could easily turn up additional photos or online postings that show a person they initially believed was harmless had, in fact, encouraged or engaged in other crimes.
Investigators also expect that some of those charged in the riot will eventually cooperate and provide evidence against others, and that could change their understanding of what certain people said or did that day, these people said; nevertheless, these people said, some in federal law enforcement are concerned that charging people solely with unlawful entry, when they are not known to have committed any other bad acts, could lead to losses if they go to trial.
Oh, this isn't some big search for justice, it's can we get a conviction and not look bad if the glove doesn't fit.
What's next, WaCompo dropping to knees and undoing trou?
Another official noted most of those arrested so far have no criminal records; meanwhile, defense lawyers for some of those charged are contemplating something akin to a "Trump defense" - that the president or other authority figures gave them permission or invited them to commit an otherwise illegal act.
Didn't work for the Nazis, or at My Lai.
"If you think of yourself as a soldier doing the bidding of the commander in chief, you don't try to hide your actions. You assume you will be held up as a hero by the nation," criminal defense lawyers Teri Kanefield and Mark Reichel wrote last week.
Such a defense might not forestall charges but could be effective at trial or sentencing. Trump's looming impeachment trial in the Senate will also focus further attention on his actions and raise questions about the culpability of followers for the misinformation spread by leaders around bogus election-fraud claims rejected by courts and state voting officials.
The pre$$ and the courts never bothered to look at any evidence or affidavits, but you know.
Prosecutors have other options. For rioters with no previous criminal records or convictions and whose known behavior inside the Capitol was not violent or destructive, the government could enter into deferred plea agreements, a diversion program akin to pretrial probation in which prosecutors agree to drop charges if a defendant commits no offenses over a certain time period.
Such a resolution would not result in even a misdemeanor conviction, and has been used before in some cases involving individuals with a history of mental illness who were arrested for jumping the White House fence. Criminal defense attorneys note there may be further distinctions between individuals who may have witnessed illegal activity or otherwise had reason to know they were entering a restricted area, and those for whom prosecutors can't show such awareness.
There is also a question over whether charging all of the rioters could swamp the federal court system. In 2019, D.C. federal courts recorded only about 430 criminal cases, and fewer than 300 last year, when the legal system slowed significantly due to the pandemic. Many of those cases, however, had multiple defendants.
This is turning into a bad f**king joke.
The workload of prosecuting the rioters could be eased if some of the cases were farmed out to other U.S. attorney offices around the country, but so far D.C. prosecutors have shown no interest in doing so. The law generally requires that individuals be prosecuted in the district in which a crime occurred.
"The crime happened here. Prosecutors and judges can see the crime scene from their office windows. I find it strange anyone would suggest it be done anywhere else," a person familiar with the investigation said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an internal debate.
Beyond all the evidence-gathering and charging decisions left to do, federal officials concede there will likely be some number of people who were there that day and are simply never identified, due to some combination of luck, masks or lack of social media posts.....
Would that be like registered Democrat Aaron Mostofsky, son of a judge?
They didn't trash the place but because of what happened they need to "reform democracy."
"Democrats make federal election standards a top priority" by Christina A. Cassidy, Associated Press January 23, 2021
Democrats plan to move quickly on one of the first bills of the new Congress, citing the need for federal election standards and other reforms to shore up the foundations of American democracy after a tumultuous post-election period and deadly riot at the Capitol.
And ensconce their power in perpetuity and forever.
Never will there be a fair election ever again.
States have long had disparate and contradictory rules for running elections, but the 2020 election, which featured pandemic-related changes to ease voting and then a flood of lawsuits by former President Donald Trump and his allies, underscored the differences from state to state: Mail-in ballots due on Election Day or just postmarked by then? Absentee voting allowed for all or just voters with an excuse? Same-day or advance-only registration?
Who cares?
I'll never vote again.
It's been rendering meaningless, and has been for some time, only now the illusion is off.
Democrats, asserting constitutional authority to set the time, place and manner of federal elections, want national rules they say would make voting more uniform, accessible and fair across the nation. The bill would mandate early voting, same-day registration and other long-sought reforms that Republicans reject as federal overreach.
“We have just literally seen an attack on our own democracy,” said U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat from Minnesota, referring to the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. “I cannot think of a more timely moment to start moving on democracy reform.”
I'm so sick of the buzz words when we don't even have that. It's an increasingly totalitarian corporate oligarchy we are looking at oil the road to full-blown communism.
The STATE will decide what you can and cannot do, all in service to their ma$ters.
The legislation first introduced two years ago, known as the For the People Act, also would give independent commissions the job of drawing congressional districts, require political groups to disclose high-dollar donors, create reporting requirements for online political ads and, in a rearview nod at Trump, obligate presidents to disclose their tax returns.
Obama's IRS isn't done auditing yet, even after ten years of finding nothing.
Republican opposition was fierce during the last session. At the time, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., labeled it the “Democrat Politician Protection Act” and said in an op-ed that Democrats were seeking to “change the rules of American politics to benefit one party.”
Yeah, well, FU*K HIM.
While Democrats control Congress for the first time in a decade, the measure’s fate depends on whether enough Republicans can be persuaded to reconsider a bill they have repeatedly rejected. If not, Democrats could decide it’s time to take the extraordinary and difficult step of eliminating the Senate filibuster, a procedural tool often used by the minority party to block bills under rules that require 60 votes to advance legislation.
I'm told not, but you never know.
Advocates say the bill is the most consequential piece of voting legislation since the Voting Rights Act of 1965. “People just want to be able to cast their vote without it being an ordeal,” said Rep. John Sarbanes, a Democrat from Maryland who is the lead sponsor of the House bill. “It’s crazy in America that you still have to navigate an obstacle course to get to the ballot box.”
Yeah, it shouldn't be an ordeal to go cast your worthless vote.
Current plans would have the full House take up the bill as soon as the first week of February. The Senate Rules Committee would then consider a companion bill introduced in the Senate. A quick vote would be remarkable considering the Senate also is likely to be juggling Trump’s impeachment trial, confirmation of President Joe Biden’s Cabinet choices and another round of coronavirus relief.
While states have long had different voting procedures, the November 2020 election highlighted how the variability could be used to sow doubt about the outcome. The bill’s supporters, which include national voting and civil rights organizations, cited dozens of pre-election lawsuits that challenged procedural rules, such as whether ballots postmarked on Election Day should count.
They also pointed to the post-election litigation Trump and his allies filed to try to get millions of legitimately cast ballots tossed out. Many of those lawsuits targeted election changes intended to make voting easier. That included a Pennsylvania law the state’s Republican-led legislature passed before the pandemic to make absentee ballots available to all registered voters upon request.
Government and election officials repeatedly have described the election as the most secure in U.S. history. Even former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr, a Trump ally, said before leaving his post that there was no evidence of widespread fraud that would overturn the result.
Uh-huh.
Yeah, Deep $tate secret-keeper and betrayer was a Trump ally, right.
Never mind the most secure election ever after four years of Russia, Russia, Russia, right up until election day.
This stuff is so insulting it's become useless for anything other than lining the bird cage.
“The strategy of lying about voter fraud, delegitimizing the election outcome and trying to suppress votes has been unmasked for the illegitimate attack on our democracy that it is, and I think that it opens a lot more doors to real conversations about how to fix our voting system and root out this cancer,” said Wendy Weiser, head of the democracy program at the Brennan Center for Justice, a public policy institute.
Along with the election reform bill, the House two years ago introduced a related bill, now known as the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in honor of the late civil rights activist and congressman. House Democrats are expected to reintroduce it soon after it had similarly stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate.
Pass it because that is what John would have wanted (puke).
Thankfully, that was where the print copy ended.
“If you still believe in what we all learned in high school government class, that democracy works best when as many eligible people participate, these are commonsense reforms,” said Sen. Alex Padilla, a Democrat who oversaw California’s elections before being appointed to the seat formerly held by Vice President Kamala Harris, but Republican officials like Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill remain opposed. Merrill said the federal government’s role is limited and that states must be allowed to innovate and implement their own voting rules.
“Those decisions are best left up to the states, and I think the states are the ones that should determine what course of action they should take,” Merrill said, noting that Alabama has increased voter registration and participation without implementing early voting. “To just say that everything needs to be uniform, that’s not the United States of America,” Merrill said.
In the Senate, a key question will be whether there is enough Republican support for elements of the voting reform bill to persuade Democrats to break off certain parts of it into smaller legislation. For now, Democrats say they want a floor vote on the full package.
Edward B. Foley, an election law expert at Ohio State University, said Democrats should consider narrow reforms that could gain bipartisan support, cautioning that moving too quickly on a broad bill runs the risk of putting off Republicans.
They don't care what Republicans think, and have made that obvious.
“It would seem to me at this moment in American history, a precarious moment, the right instinct should be a kind of bipartisanship to rebuild common ground as opposed to ‘Our side won, your side lost and we are off to the races,’” Foley said.
F**k off, Foley, after the last four years of hell from them.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
God help us all:
"In Biden’s Catholic faith, an ascendant liberal Christianity" by Elizabeth Dias New York Times, January 23, 2021
There are myriad changes with the incoming Biden administration. One of the most significant: a president who has spent a lifetime steeped in Christian rituals and practices.
President Biden, perhaps the most religiously observant commander in chief in a half-century, regularly attends Mass and speaks of how his Catholic faith grounds his life and his policies, and with Biden, a different, more liberal Christianity is ascendant, less focused on sexual politics and more on combating poverty, climate change and racial inequality.
That explains the pettophilia.
His arrival comes after four years in which conservative Christianity has reigned in America’s highest halls of power, embodied in white evangelicals laser-focused on ending abortion and guarding against what they saw as encroachments on their freedoms. Their devotion to former President Donald Trump was so fervent that many showed up in Washington on Jan. 6 to protest the election results.
I'm sure they will be caught in the dragnet and charged.
Biden’s leadership is a repudiation of the claim by many conservative leaders that Democrats are inherently anti-Christian.
His rise comes as fewer registered Democrats identify as Christian. Nearly half are religiously unaffiliated or believers of other faiths, a share that has grown significantly in recent years, according to the Pew Research Center; about 80% of registered Republicans are Christian, yet the current influence of liberal Christianity in the Democratic Party goes beyond Biden. Sen. Raphael Warnock, pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, won election with a campaign rooted in Black liberation theology. The Sunday after his election, Warnock preached about John the Baptist, the “truth-telling troublemaker,” he said, who was beheaded by King Herod for his prophetic witness.
Rep. Cori Bush, a pastor who led Kingdom Embassy International in St. Louis, has started her tenure in Congress advocating universal basic income. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez connects her Catholic faith with her push for reforming health care and environmental policy. She has said her favorite Bible story is one where Jesus, in anger, threw money changers out of the temple.
She is lucky she escaped with her life, or so I am told, and honestly, the communist socialism comes through loud and clear from the false prophets of the Democrats.
In his inaugural address, Biden rooted himself and the country in a Christian moral vision that makes room for a pluralistic society, unlike his predecessor who promised to make America a certain kind of Christian nation. Biden quoted Augustine, “a saint in my church,” he said, who wrote that “a people was a multitude defined by the common objects of their love.”
Augustine, the fourth-century North African bishop, recognized that no political community was going to be the city of God on earth, explained Eric Gregory, professor of religion at Princeton University. For Biden, “it was a subtle and explicit effort to show a different vision of a way in which a Christian could imagine themselves as part of a diverse America, one that is defined by these common objects of love, rather than by hate and fear or exclusion,” he said.
Do they ever themselves?
Do they not smell their own stink, or do they just not care?
While conservative Catholics have doubled down on abortion policy and religious freedom for the past four years, Biden’s policy priorities reflect those of Pope Francis, who has sought to turn the church’s attention from sexual politics to issues like environmental protection, poverty and migration.
On his first day in office, Biden recommitted the United States to the Paris climate agreement, the international accord designed to avert global warming; ended the ban on travel from predominantly Muslim and African countries; and stopped construction on the border wall.
Biden’s support for abortion rights is already causing tension in the Catholic church.
He just blew his entire thesis to smithereens halfway through the piece!
Biden’s priorities reflect values that progressive faith leaders have pushed for and that motivated many to speak out for him during the campaign, said Derrick Harkins, who led interfaith outreach for the Democratic National Committee this past cycle. There is a sense of moral synergy on the left among not only progressive Christians but also humanists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and the spectrum of faith traditions, he said.
The work now “has a chance of really having traction,” he said. “I’m very optimistic about what can unfold.”
The grassroots progressive Christian movement is center stage in Biden’s Washington.
Related:
He's right: "the Christian church, awaiting the End Times and the apocalypse, has come eye-to-eye with foreseen evil, yet it fails to fully recognize it, for it is cloaked in the fear of death."
Unlike four years ago, when many of the participants in the post-inaugural prayer service were conservative evangelicals or prosperity gospel preachers, this year’s Thursday service included a broad array of religious progressives, including two transgender faith leaders. Rabbi Sharon Brous of IKAR, a Jewish community in Los Angeles, prayed for the coming of a new America, one “built on love, rooted in justice and propelled by our moral imagination.”
Tell it to the Palestinians, guy.
The Rev. William Barber II, a chair of the Poor People’s Campaign, preached and directly challenged Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to pursue a Third Reconstruction, decades after the civil rights era. He urged them to address “interlocking injustices of systemic racism, poverty, ecological devastation/denial of health care, the war economy, and the false moral narrative of religious nationalism. Jesus taught that a nation is judged by how it treats the least of these, the poor, the hungry, the sick, the immigrant, he explained in an interview. “Birth pangs require one thing: pushing,” he said. “That is what the movement has to do.”
Meanwhile, the wealth divide yawns wider and wider because of CV as we head towards complete impoverishment and the Great Reset!
For many believers, the shift in the Christianity of the presidency is already personal. On the eve of his inauguration, Biden led the nation in a memorial service on the mall for victims of the coronavirus pandemic. He adopted the posture of a chaplain, noted Michelle Ami Reyes, vice president of the Asian American Christian Collaborative, a group that started last year to combat anti-Asian racism rising from the pandemic. “That is a deeply biblical posture,” she said, “mourning with those who mourn.”
Must mean more $ociali$m and another World War coming.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
All things being equal, of cour$e:
"Biden seeks to define his presidency by an early emphasis on equity" by Jim Tankersley and Michael D. Shear New York Times, January 23, 2021
And defeat white supremacy, according to the printed subheading.
WASHINGTON — In his first days in office, President Biden has devoted more attention to issues of racial equity than any new president since Lyndon B. Johnson, a focus that has cheered civil rights activists and drawn early criticism from conservatives.
In his inauguration speech, the president pledged to defeat “white supremacy,” using a burst of executive orders on day one to declare that “advancing equity, civil rights, racial justice and equal opportunity is the responsibility of the whole of our government.”
He has ordered his coronavirus response team to ensure that vaccines are distributed equitably. His $1.9 trillion recovery plan targets underserved communities by calling for paid leave for women forced out of jobs, unemployment benefits that largely help Black and brown workers, and expanded tax credits for impoverished Americans who are disproportionately nonwhite, and the new administration is preparing to take sweeping steps in the months ahead to directly address inequity in housing, criminal justice, voting rights, health care, education and economic mobility.
“Racial equity is not a silo in and of itself,” said Cecilia Rouse, Biden’s nominee to lead his Council of Economic Advisers, who would be the first Black economist to oversee the council if confirmed by the Senate. “It is woven in all of these policy efforts.”
The actions reflect the political coalition backing Biden, who was lifted by Black voters to his party’s nomination and who won the White House in part on the strength of Black turnout and support from women in the suburbs and elsewhere. They also reflect what historians see as a unique opening for Biden to directly address issues of inequality — in contrast to President Barack Obama, under whom Biden served as vice president.
Obama, the nation’s first Black president, took pains to be seen as a president for “all Americans,” as opposed to Black Americans, said Nicole Hemmer, a Columbia University historian and associate research scholar with the Obama Presidency Oral History project.
“You got less of that overt racial equity language from Barack Obama than you get from Joe Biden,” Hemmer said. “The challenge to Biden is how he makes clear the universal benefits of focusing on racial and gender equity. He is going to face real pushback on this.”
The backlash has already begun. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told Fox News that Biden’s inaugural address had attacked Republicans with “thinly veiled innuendo, calling us white supremacists, calling us racists.”
Hey, the Globe says Congre$$ must face the enemy within after the tears of outrage turned to joy.
The work camp awaits, there is no arguing that even if some CIA are optimistic as we coast into Biden's dark winter (all Trump’s fault, of course, and “Dark Winter” was the code name for a scenario in which a biological weapon was used against the american people that predated the 2001 anthrax event).
Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who is leading Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, is charged with ensuring that the new administration embeds issues of racial equity into everything it does. In an interview, she rejected the idea that doing so is a “zero-sum game” that benefited some groups of Americans at the expense of others.
They are the racists!
“Look at the COVID crisis, which disproportionately sickened and killed Black and brown people who are the front-line workers, the essential workers,” she said. “We are all poorer when those among us who are most vulnerable, most disadvantaged, are suffering.”
Rice, who is Black, has little experience in domestic policy, but has recruited a team with deep roots in civil rights and justice. She said Biden persuaded her to return to the White House with the promise that equity issues would not be ”an isolated bubble,” but rather a central mission of his administration, one focused on rolling back the legacy of President Donald Trump, who she said “deliberately sought to divide and degrade huge segments of our population.”
One of the fullest expressions of Trump’s views came in September when he ordered the government to stop using diversity training programs, saying they were promoting a “malign ideology” that misrepresented the country’s history.
“This ideology is rooted in the pernicious and false belief that America is an irredeemably racist and sexist country; that some people, simply on account of their race or sex, are oppressors; and that racial and sexual identities are more important than our common status as human beings and Americans,” Trump wrote in his executive order.
Biden revoked the order on his first day in office. He also disbanded a presidential commission Trump had assembled that last week produced a report, widely denounced by historians, that included a reframing of the United States’ history of slavery in terms more favorable to white slaveholders.
Biden made racial and gender equity promises a central theme of his campaign. He nominated a Cabinet that has more women and people of color than any president before him, though he drew criticism from the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus for not appointing any Asian American or Pacific-Islander secretaries.
Plenty of you-know-whos, though.
The president’s legislative proposals to advance equity include trillions of dollars in new spending on coronavirus relief and, in an ensuing package to be announced next month, infrastructure, all of which are loaded with provisions meant to help Americans who have historically suffered discrimination.
That printing of money will impoverish generations to come, whatever color they be.
Many of Biden’s plans are long-standing liberal priorities, but which the president and his team are now advocating with a racial emphasis. Biden aides have stressed how raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, as Biden has proposed, would help Black and Latino workers in particular, and on Friday, Biden pushed Congress to act on his call for expanded anti-poverty tax credits by highlighting their effects on nonwhite families.
“Our plan would reduce poverty in the Black community by a third and in the Hispanic community by almost 40%,” Biden told reporters.
Biden’s aides say it is possible to make progress on those historical inequalities, including income and wealth gaps by race and gender, while also addressing the nation’s immediate economic crisis. Rouse said the focus would help all Americans, regardless of race or gender, by improving the performance of the economy.
The president and his top aides describe the broader effort to achieve equity through the government in grand and sweeping terms: a pledge to begin “embedding equity across federal policymaking and rooting out systemic racism and other barriers to opportunity from federal programs and institutions.”
In an executive order he signed in the first hours of his presidency, Biden directed top officials across the federal government to examine how they could reshape the federal workforce to ensure that people of color, the poor, rural residents, the disabled, LGBTQ people and religious minorities are not denied opportunity or government benefits.
It also establishes efforts to break down federal data, including economic indicators, “by race, ethnicity, gender, disability, income, veteran status or other key demographic variables” to measure progress on equity goals, a move praised by many economists.
“I am beyond excited,” said Rhonda Sharpe, an economist who leads the Women’s Institute for Science, Equity and Race in Virginia. “When you disaggregate data, what you get to see is the nuances in outcomes, and the nuances can help you craft better policies,” and Biden has faced pressure to also make changes to the White House organizational chart to ensure a focus on equity. In December, the NAACP urged him to create a civil rights envoy, and civil rights groups and other organizations sent his advisers a five-page memo asking Biden to establish a White House office dedicated to racial equity.
Unless it is CV, and it looks like we have another buzzword.
How will they get equity after destroying your line of work anyway?
Keep sending you increasingly worthless printed paper until the digital wallet of slavery is ready?
In recent weeks, those groups have largely applauded Biden’s efforts, including his appointment of Catherine Lhamon, chair of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, to serve as a deputy director under Rice for racial justice and equity.
Biden also won praise from a group of Latino leaders after meeting with them the week before the inauguration. “He was very articulate, very clear, about how equity needed to be at the center of all his health and economic recommendations and proposals and investments,” said Janet Murguía, the president of UnidosUS, one of the groups that sent the racial equity memo to the president’s advisers. “He’s talking about this in a very compelling way.”
The NAACP’s president, Derrick Johnson, said Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris deserved credit for a “strong start,” but his organization, he said, would be closely watching which policies the administration prioritizes and how Biden sets his goals for equity. “I believe that they have the right intentions,” Johnson said, “but there has to be an executive priority that any decision that they make is made with a true racial equity lens and is measured against a set of metrics so that we can all see the progress.”
Columnist Andrew Sullivan, who writes a Substack newsletter, accused the president of “culture war aggression” in a recent post, saying Biden’s focus on “equity” would give “named identity groups a specific advantage in treatment by the federal government over other groups. You don’t get to unite the country by dividing it along these deep and inflammatory issues of identity,” Sullivan wrote.
“Many of the strides that we made during the Obama-Biden administration were not only reversed, but due to incendiary rhetoric, policies and practices, set our country back even further,” said Valerie Jarrett, who was one of Obama’s senior advisers. “Yes, it is less equitable today than it was in 2016. Therefore, the urgency to act now, and the willingness of the American people to support their president and the administration acting now, in this way, is far greater. We maximize growth, we maximize productivity in this country when we maximize all our productive assets,” she said in an interview. “Embedded in that is a recognition that we have a lot of talented people whose skills, whose knowledge, whose innovations and creativity are not being brought to bear to help their country.”
Yeah, neoliberali$m is great!
Only two presidents before Biden have used their first weeks in office to push for equality with the same force, Hemmer said. The first was Ulysses S. Grant, who called for better treatment of Native Americans and the passage of a constitutional amendment to give Black men the right to vote. Nearly a century later, Johnson, who was thrust into office after President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, called for the passage of civil rights legislation that helped remove some of the barriers that held back people of color throughout American society.....
Related:
"Advocacy groups are heading into farm fields in California to bring vaccines and information to migrant laborers in Spanish and other languages. Some immigrants in the country illegally may fear that information taken during vaccinations could be turned over to authorities and not seek out vaccines. Those who speak little or no English may find it difficult to access shots. These challenges are particularly worrying for Latino immigrants, who make a large portion of the workforce in industries where they have a significant risk of exposure. In California’s sprawling Riverside County, home to a $1.3 billion agriculture industry, a health care nonprofit went to a grape farm to register workers for vaccine appointments. The Desert Healthcare District and Foundation also shares information about the virus and how to get tested on WhatsApp in Spanish. The National Day Laborer Organizing Network has used a Spanish-language radio show on social media to share information (Associated Press)."
They can have mine.
"Restaurants and certain bars across Chicago and suburban Cook County have opened their doors to customers for the first time since late October after winning approval Saturday from Illinois health officials. With the city and county moving up to Tier I of the state’s coronavirus mitigation plan, restaurants and bars that serve food can seat customers indoors at 25% capacity or 25 people per room, whichever is less. Tables will be limited to no more than four people indoors or six people outdoors, and tables must be spaced 6 feet apart. Indoor service will be limited to a maximum of two hours and bars and restaurants must close by 11 p.m. (Associated Press)."
Gee, what has changed in the last week or so, hmmmm?
It's now looking like Trump was blackmailed into leaving in the worst way, especially after he threatened the Republican e$tabli$hment with a third party.
"Spain’s top military commander has been forced to resign after he and other high-ranking officers violated established protocols and received the COVID-19 vaccine ahead of time. Spain’s defense ministry confirmed to The Associated Press on Saturday that Minister Margarita Robles had accepted the resignation of Chief of Staff General Miguel Ángel Villarroya. His resignation comes after online news site El Confidencial Digital reported that Villarroya and other top brass had broken national protocols for Spain’s vaccination strategy, which currently only allows nursing home residents and medical workers to receive shots. Several public officials have jumped the vaccine queue in recent weeks, including a regional health chief for southeast Murcia, who also resigned (Associated Press).
Go ahead, cut in.
Your people will thank you for it.
No one wants their toxic potions in a tube that don't prevent infection or transmission for a nonexistent virus that is simply renamed seasonal cold and flu.
"Britain’s main doctors organization says it is concerned about the UK’s decision to give people a second dose of coronavirus vaccine up to 12 weeks after the first, rather than the shorter gap recommended by manufacturers and the World Health Organization. The UK, which has Europe’s deadliest coronavirus outbreak, adopted the policy in order to give as many people a first dose of the vaccine as quickly as possible. So far almost 5.5 million people have received a first dose of either a vaccine made by Pfizer or one developed by AstraZeneca. AstraZeneca has said it believes a dose of its vaccine offers protection after 12 weeks, but Pfizer says it has not tested the efficacy of its jab after such a long gap. The British Medical Association urged England’s chief medical officer to “urgently review” the policy for the Pfizer vaccine. It says there was “growing concern from the medical profession regarding the delay of the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine as the U.K.’s strategy has become increasingly isolated from many other countries.” Pfizer says its second dose should take place 21 days after the first. The WHO says the second shots of coronavirus vaccines can been given up to six weeks after the first (Associated Press)."
Still pushing to jab you.
"Thousands of Hong Kong residents were locked down in their homes Saturday in an unprecedented move to contain a worsening coronavirus outbreak in the city. Authorities said 16 buildings in the city’s Yau Tsim Mong district would be locked down until all residents were tested. Residents would not be allowed to leave their homes until they received test results. “Persons subject to compulsory testing are required to stay in their premises until all such persons identified in the area have undergone testing and the test results are mostly ascertained,” the government statement said. The restrictions were expected to end within 48 hours, the government said....."
Yeah, sure, and it will take two weeks to "flatten the curve," as a year after lockdown, Wuhan is more isolated than ever.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Just after he left, a bomb exploded and F.B.I. and local authorities are investigating (have already come up with an arrest, in fact).
The King is dead!
Long live the Queen!
It's a Mass. exodus as they all desert this $hithole state.
"In farewell, Pollack says she’ll consider all transportation modes in federal highway role" by Adam Vaccaro Globe Staff, January 25, 2021
Once a fierce advocate for public transit who rose to prominence fighting to offset pollution from the Big Dig, Stephanie Pollack might seem a surprising choice to become the nation’s deputy highway administrator, but on Monday, in her first public remarks since announcing her departure for the Biden administration, the state’s outgoing transportation secretary said she would keep all modes of transportation in mind in her new role helping to oversee US roadways.
“Some people think it’s a little odd that I’m headed to [the] Federal Highway [Administration],” Pollack said during her final meeting of the MBTA’s governing board, nodding to her previous career as an environmental lawyer and transportation researcher, “but many of you have heard me say that I don’t think of people as pedestrians or bicyclists or bus riders or transit users or drivers. I think of them as people who need the transportation system to help connect them to the things they want and need, and so I go into Federal Highway with a mindset that it can be an agency that supports people rather than a singular mode of transportation,” Pollack added.
On Tuesday, Pollack will conclude her six-year tenure in Governor Charlie Baker’s administration — a span featuring significant new investment in transit modernization but marred by major crises at the Registry of Motor Vehicles and the MBTA. A self-described political progressive serving in a Republican cabinet, Pollack also leaves a strained relationship with the pro-transit community she came from, after protracted disputes over MBTA service, expansion, fares, and funding, and the best approach to a huge infrastructure project in Allston, but her comments Monday may reflect why national transportation advocates have celebrated her appointment as a positive sign for issues such as roadway safety. Under Pollack, for example, the state has implemented roadway design standards that advance bus service, as well as cycling and walking infrastructure.
That explains why she is one of the untouchables of Ma$$achusetts politics.
Despite Boston’s notorious pre-pandemic congestion, the state’s highway division has been treated like the golden child of Baker’s transportation department, managing most of its major infrastructure projects successfully.
Pollack, a visible public figure and hands-on manager across the transportation system, is leaving at a time of uncertainty.....
Well, at least you know whom to blame for the problems as she rides out of town.
"Baker sending up to 700 National Guard members to D.C. to help Secret Service in a second deployment" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff, January 25, 2021
????????
Governor Charlie Baker on Monday signed an order authorizing the deployment of up to 700 Massachusetts Air and Army National Guard personnel to Washington, D.C., to support the Secret Service, officials said.
The deployment was confirmed in a statement from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. It did not specify how the troops would help the Secret Service.
“These guard members will be traveling to Washington in the coming days and are expected to return to the Commonwealth on February 23,” the statement said. “This mission is separate from the 500 personnel who served last week in DC in support of inauguration events and returned home to Massachusetts over the weekend.”
The National Guard will ensure appropriate “force protection measures” are implemented, according to the statement.
“This includes pre-departure screenings, COVID-19 testing, and mandatory mask wear. Additionally, Soldiers and Airmen will have individual rooms while deployed to the D.C. area to further reduce risks during this pandemic,” the statement said.
Officials said the deployment won’t hamper the ability of the National Guard to assist cities and towns with any emergencies.
“The Massachusetts National Guard trains regularly with military, law enforcement, and civilian agencies to provide a broad spectrum of services in support of security, logistics, disaster relief, and other missions,” the statement said. “The Guard has a proven track record of success supporting civilian authorities and their frequent side-by-side training with state and local first responders makes them well-suited for this mission.”
The National Guard members who were deployed earlier in Washington to help with security at President Biden’s inauguration returned home Saturday.
Outside the National Guard armory in Melrose, a giant US flag suspended from the ladders of two fire trucks greeted members of the 182nd Infantry Regiment as they rolled into the city Saturday afternoon.
Residents gathered in the bitter cold to wave flags and show signs they had made to honor the troops’ homecoming. The show of support was organized by Melrose Mayor Paul Brodeur, who had addressed the soldiers at the armory before they left for the inauguration.
Baker had activated about 500 National Guard members to help provide security at Biden’s inauguration following the deadly attack on the US Capitol on Jan. 6 by a mob of supporters of then-President Trump.
Nearly 26,000 National Guard troops from across the country were sent to Washington. The violence at the Capitol claimed the lives of five people and prompted the House of Representatives to impeach Trump a second time; a trial in the Senate is pending.
Federal authorities reviewed National Guard members assigned to the inauguration and pulled a dozen from the assignment, including two for possible links to right-wing extremist movements, according to Defense Department officials. None were from Massachusetts, officials have said.
Let's hope the Guard doesn't bring COVID back, and they are investigating a Pennsylvania lawmaker who reportedly played key role in Trump’s plot to oust acting attorney general, according to Katie Benner and Catie Edmondson of the New York Times, because he was sympathetic to Trump’s baseless view that the election had been stolen, and a county official in Michigan who brandished a rifle.
Sorry, but the game is over and it is time to abort this post.
