More like jab in what was without a doubt one of the strangest Boston Sunday Globe's I have ever read, and the view totals this morning are even stranger: 33, 36, 33, 66, 66, 39, 36, 66 on eight of last nine posts, and every time they turn over it's some type of combination, and I must admit it is freaking me out a little. Those are evil combinations.
UPDATE: (June 1st log-in tally: 44)
They started yesterday off by picking you up at the airport:
"When Peter Wang landed around midnight at Logan Airport last week for his first business trip since early 2020, his seatmate offered up some advice: Order your Uber now. Wang looked around. The seat-belt light was still on. He thanked the local for her tip but decided to wait until he deplaned to open the ride-hailing app. An hour and a half later, Wang, a data science executive from Austin, Texas, was still at the airport and so desperate to get to Harvard Square he considered hitchhiking. The Uber and Lyft apps were barren. Public transit had shuttered for the evening. Wang eventually snagged one of the taxis trickling in every five minutes, leaving behind some two dozen other passengers stranded in the fluorescent glow of the vacant taxi stand. To those who rely on ride-hailing apps to get around Boston, Wang’s story likely comes as no surprise as the newly vaccinated masses venture out into the world again. They have found ride-hailing companies grappling with a nationwide shortage of drivers. The number of US-based drivers logging into Uber during the first three months of 2021 was down 37.5 percent year over year, according to data from Apptopia, a Boston-based market intelligence service. COVID-19 concerns have also held some back. Felipe Martinez, a full-time driver who has diabetes and has two young children, stopped driving last March to protect himself and care for his kids. Today, as Massachusetts opens up, he is one of several area drivers torn between a fear of the vaccine and a fear of the virus. Historically, the summer months are the worst for ride-hailing drivers who rely on Boston’s college students to sustain them. The mass exodus of these students creates a saturation of drivers, and while the phenomenon of hitchhiking CEOs may disappear, the fraught relationship between ride-hailing companies, their drivers and the state will not, particularly with more attention paid to labor practices among tech behemoths....."
Wang came in from McAllen, Texas, but more on that later because you kids better go get your driver's license right away!
"The $176 million Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites Seaport is finally opening, but to a radically different world. The pillars of Boston’s once-lucrative hotel business have buckled over the last 15 months, and many people in the industry believe it will take years to rebound fully. “In a normal world, it would be really exciting to have all these new hotels opening,” said Tim Kirwan, a longtime Boston hotel executive who now consults on projects. “Now it’s feels like ‘What are you doing?’” They’re doing what hoteliers ― known for their optimism even during challenging times ― have always done. Executives involved in several of this summer’s debuts point out that being under construction during the pandemic had its advantages. They didn’t face wrenching decisions about layoffs or need to pivot to housing college students. They can start fresh and open gradually, with time to work out the inevitable kinks. Leisure travel is a priority for Paul Sacco, CEO of the Massachusetts Lodging Association. He acknowledges that it will be awhile before business and international travel are revived, but he’s hopeful that domestic tourists can fill rooms this summer, and he’s pushing for the state to boost its marketing efforts to get eager travelers to come to Massachusetts, instead of somewhere else. Tourism is already driving business in other cities. Improvement, however, is relative in this weird new environment for the battered hotel business....."
Yeah, everything is relative!
A Marxi$t couldn't have said it better, and what a difference a year makes!
Turns out the Great Re$et was erected while you were locked down while much has been lost, too, for every dark downtown restaurant and “For lease” sign lining Newbury Street represents a business that went under, livelihoods that may take years to come back, and the mask signs and COVID 19-testing facilities that dot the cityscape reflect a threat that’s likely to stay with us for a long time.
Someone call a cop!
"The claim takes up a few quick sentences in a two-page affidavit, written on behalf of a close friend. Former police commissioner William Gross swore under oath that he reviewed the internal affairs history of his hand-picked successor Dennis White for a previous promotion in 2014. Those findings, he said, were also presented to then-mayor Martin J. Walsh. The allegation, a direct rebuttal of Walsh, was first disclosed last week in White’s failed court motion to thwart his firing as commissioner, and it raised new questions about what Walsh knew of White’s history of domestic violence allegations before he appointed him to lead the police force four months ago. It also laid bare what has become a strained relationship between the former mayor and his former commissioner, whose tendencies to stray from Walsh — especially on political matters — while top cop often caused troubles for the mayor. Some of those controversies trailed Walsh right up to his confirmation as US labor secretary in March....."
So the family excuse Gross gave was BS, and what are they talking about with Walsh???
None of this came out until after he was promoted and skipped town in the wake of all the criminal CVD destruction?
Related:
"These should be exhilarating times for Martin J. Walsh. The worries of running a big city, particularly during a pandemic, are gone. His new job as labor secretary puts him in the middle of a major debate over rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure. He meets with influential lawmakers and other Cabinet secretaries in Washington, travels the country promoting worker-friendly policies, and even gets to joke around in the Oval Office with his longtime friend, President Biden. Then every weekend, for the time being at least, Walsh flies back to his beloved Boston, but instead of being celebrated in the city he led for seven years, Walsh is facing criticism and controversy over his appointment of Dennis A. White as police commissioner – and it’s all started to spill over into his new life in the nation’s capital......"
Oh, no, and he is JETTING EVERY WEEKEND!?
I guess that is something akin to the climate crisis requiring a managed retreat (like CVD?!) and a new vision for Boston’s waterfront — a layered defense and model of coastal resiliency as he literally gets stuck in the $wamp!
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I will be getting to some Memorial Day stuff a little later, and the large link above is not the impression I got from the article at the bottom of the front-page:
"June is seen as last, best chance to boost COVID-19 vaccinations in Massachusetts; New test will be surpassing target of 4.1 million immunized residents" by Robert Weisman Globe Staff, May 29, 2021
If you think this is their "last, best" chance then I have a bridge in Boston to sell you, and will elaborate on it more later.
Some time in mid-June, state officials expect to hit a target once thought to be a stretch: fully vaccinating 4.1 million Massachusetts residents — nearly three-quarters of the adult population — against the relentless coronavirus.
That milestone will permit a return to normal life for most people, health experts say, citing recent sharp declines in COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, but it likely won’t be enough to stamp out the virus or prevent future spikes in vulnerable pockets of the population, they caution.
While there are hopeful signs, there’s also fear that time is running out to boost the state’s vaccination numbers much higher. That’s because, with most COVID-19 restrictions being lifted this Memorial Day weekend and summer fast approaching, it may feel less urgent to some to get a shot.
Already, the weekly volume of vaccine doses administered has fallen 49 percent in the past month, and with demand waning, most of the state’s mass vaccination sites are slated to be phased out over the coming weeks.
June now looms as the endgame, the state’s last, best chance to push up the vaccination tally. Getting shots in more arms could downgrade COVID-19 from a pandemic to an “endemic” that persists in a less punishing and disruptive form, though there is no precise marker for when that may happen.
That is so blooming cryptic.
Officials know who they need to reach: recently eligible young people, the many folks still in wait-and-see mode, residents lacking access or transportation to injection sites, and Black, Latino, and rural white people suspicious of inoculation. What’s not yet known is how many more of them can be persuaded.
New state data show conspicuous gaps in who has been vaccinated. Hispanic residents, who make up 12 percent of the population, account for only 8 percent of those who’ve received at least one vaccine dose. Black people, who are 7 percent of the population, account for 5 percent of vaccine recipients.
I do wonder how that adds up to more than half of the population, but will withhold comment for now.
The data also show income and geographic disparities, with poorer and more rural counties in Western and Southeastern Massachusetts trailing wealthier suburban counties in the percentage of residents who have gotten shots. Many of the gaps in Massachusetts are narrower than those in most other states, where similar vaccination divides are seen.
Holdouts of all races in their 20s and 30s, who are thought to be more susceptible to online misinformation, are a particular source of concern to many public health leaders.
“Younger people are the most plugged into social media, and they’re less able to distinguish lies from medical facts,” said Dr. Cassandra Pierre, medical director of public health programs at Boston Medical Center and assistant professor at the Boston University School of Medicine, who worries about uneven vaccine distribution across different ages and races.
Pierre, who took her hospital’s vaccine drive to the House of Deliverance church in Dorchester earlier this month, said many people in the surrounding Haitian community were so busy with their jobs and lives that they weren’t focused on vaccination. “We went to businesses around the block and said we have vaccine and we got people who were shopping, who were working, who were doing their laundry,” she said.
God Bless 'em, and now I'm glad they were allowed to stay -- or were they?!
Governor Charlie Baker initially set July 4 as his target date for immunizing 4.1 million residents, a number representing nearly 74 percent of those in Massachusetts over 18, according to a US Census population estimate. More recently, as ranks of the vaccinated swelled, Baker moved up the timetable by a month, saying he expected to meet the goal by early June. On Friday, he said that is now likely to happen in mid-June.
State officials didn’t respond to questions on whether the Baker administration plans to then push its vaccination target beyond 4.1 million. In an interview with the Globe in March, the governor said he would ultimately like to vaccine 4.5 million to 5 million. “I can be aspirational, can’t I?” he said.
Is that why the Globe is attacking him from both sides?
It's a devil you know, devil you don't situation, a shell game regarding candidates, that's all. I would to believe the good governor has abandoned the project; however, they don't go 9/10ths of the way to pull the plug at the last minute. Something else is afoot.
More than 3.5 million residents were fully vaccinated as of last week. That’s over half of the state’s population of 6.9 million, which includes children under 12 who aren’t yet eligible.
To reach the remaining people, state officials and their contractors have changed tactics in recent weeks, stepping up community-based efforts as well as mobile clinics that can go to people who are homebound or unable to travel.
The state has also tried to generate new interest in getting vaccinated with contests and giveaways.
While the incentives have been less creative than those in some other states — Maine is offering free hunting and fishing licenses, Ohio running a Vax-A-Million lottery awarding $1 million prizes to winners — Massachusetts teamed up with the Museum of Science to hand out museum passes to those vaccinated at a clinic there last weekend and with Dunkin’ to provide iced coffee at vaccine clinics during two Dunkin’ Days at the Hynes Convention Center last week. In addition, CVS, which runs 288 vaccine clinics in the state, will enter those who get shots into a sweepstakes, with prizes including cruises and a trip to the Super Bowl.
The Globe neglected to tell you about California's lottery!
The attempted bribing of the population is bad enough as they try to lure people into their palled trap to vaccinate everyone, and I'm afraid it's only going to get worse after these soft tactics.
I pray and hope I'm wrong. Every day, more than once, and there are subtle signals out there if you know where to look (hint: it's not the agenda-pu$hing pre$$, although we need to watch the coverage closely. They can only withdraw the program a certain way, and confessing the truth isn't one of them).
Some deeply involved in the vaccination program think Massachusetts could be on track to surpass the governor’s target despite the slowdown in traffic at injection sites. CIC Health, the largest operator of mass vaccination centers, will continue to ferry vaccine to smaller sites in Boston neighborhoods and cities hard-hit by the virus, such as Chelsea, Revere, New Bedford, and Fall River. The state contractor is currently injecting about 200 doses a day at each of its community “pop-up” sites.
“It’s never enough until we [can’t] reach another person who wants to get vaccinated,” said Rodrigo Martinez, the chief experience officer for CIC Health.
Though vaccinators expect to attract more holdouts over time, they’re also bumping up against the reality that the largest share of people who want shots have gotten them, but universal vaccination may not be necessary to resume most of the myriad activities halted by the pandemic.
Say WHAT?
Requirement may bring lawsuits to the hospital, and even as the final business-related pandemic restrictions are lifted in Massachusetts, no clear consensus has emerged about whether workers should be required to get vaccinated to walk in the door or wear masks on the job. One new measure of sentiment among businesses comes from the Newton-Needham Regional Chamber, which surveyed about 450 members last week about their back-to-work protocols. On face coverings, nearly one third of businesses, 29 percent, said they will mandate that employees wear them. A similar number will not, and one third remained undecided. Meanwhile, 23 percent will require employees who return to the workplace to be vaccinated, while nearly 40 percent said they will not, with 30 percent undecided.
It seems that the size of the business makes a big difference, but bring your vaccine card just in case.
“It turns out that you don’t need to get to 85 percent of the population, or to reach this notion of herd immunity, in order to be successful and get rid of the restrictions and open up the economy,” said David E. Williams, president of the Boston consulting firm Health Business Group.
Williams said many 12- to 15-year-olds were quick to get their shots as soon as they qualified for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine on May 10. “The kids have suffered from social isolation,” he said. “They want to go to the prom, they want to see friends.”
There are other hopeful signs. A widely followed model from the University of Washington recently projected that the number of Americans who’ve received one vaccine dose — currently more than 165.7 million — will climb 15 percent by the end of August. That suggests Massachusetts, which has seen greater vaccine acceptance and less hesitancy than the national average, could get a substantial bump in vaccine stragglers throughout the summer.
The case for optimism is also bolstered by the large numbers of people who have not gotten their shots but have already been infected by COVID-19, which gives them at least some level of immunity to the virus anyway.
Bailing on universal vaccination and now admitting to NATURAL HERD IMMUNITY?
WHAT is GOING ON HERE?
For public health experts, major caveats remain, such as concern that COVID-19 variants continue to circulate worldwide, threatening to generate a strain that eludes the protection of vaccines. That alone is cause for continuing to boost vaccine numbers in Massachusetts, they say.
I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!
“If we get 4 million-plus [vaccinated], we will probably not stamp out the virus completely,” said Dr. Philip Landrigan, founding director of Boston College’s global public health program. “Kids under 12 are still not vaccinated and they will remain a reservoir for disease, but while we will undoubtedly still have the virus around, we won’t have the large outbreaks because there won’t be enough people to spread it.”
Before opening the front section I would like to present to you these page B1 articles (both below the fold):
"Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, restrictions on places of worship have been deeply felt by communities of faith whose fundamental practice of gathering in prayer was upended by the lethal threat of COVID-19, but with Saturday’s lifting of the state’s remaining coronavirus restrictions, religious communities have a chance to move beyond the past year when many switched to online services. Some houses of worship became battlegrounds for challenging government-imposed limits to stop the spread of COVID-19, while others played a crucial role in getting their members vaccinated against the virus....."
The Globe then headed over to the Temple Israel and I have faith, just not in Globe, and I'm sure the evil Satani$ts are chuckling about the flock being allowed back in to the holy sites.
"Weather, caution mute celebration of latest reopening step, loosening COVID-19 restrictions in Mass." by John Hilliard and Lucas Phillips Globe Staff and Globe Correspondent, May 29, 2021
Even as the state lifted many of its pandemic-era restrictions Saturday, the unofficial start of summer, celebrations were muted and those who ventured out were cold, wet — and mostly still masked, but there were signs that the state had turned a corner, in the days leading up to Memorial Day.
As usual, there is another one ahead.
People who are fully vaccinated are no longer required to wear masks in most settings or practice social distancing, according to the new rules, and organizers of large outdoor gatherings, along with restaurants and other businesses, can end capacity restrictions imposed because of COVID-19, although businesses can also keep restrictions in place.
Some rules remain in place, including mask requirements on buses, trains, planes, and in health care settings. The state recommends that people not fully vaccinated continue to wear masks and remain socially distanced while in public.
The restrictions were lifted as the daily average of new cases in Massachusetts has fallen to levels not reported since September.
Samuel Scarpino, an epidemiologist at Northeastern University, said in a phone interview Saturday that the state has made significant progress with vaccinations, but he remains concerned about the threat posed by more-infectious coronavirus variants, particularly one identified recently in India.
Unvaccinated people in Massachusetts will be at high risk, he said, as well as any communities where vaccination rates are lower than the state average. The state must continue its vaccination campaign and try to get 80-85 percent of the population inoculated, he said.
“It’s really important that we celebrate what we achieved, but we focus on getting people vaccinated,” Scarpino said.
Monster.
The relaxed rules come as welcome news for many businesses, including restaurants, according to Bob Luz, president and chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Restaurant Association.
“People in the restaurant industry certainly feel like we’re going to be able to put this in the rearview mirror starting today,” Luz said in a phone interview Saturday. “There is a strong, pent-up desire there” among customers.
On Saturday, what might have been the state’s biggest party day coincided with weather that felt more like November than late May. By early afternoon, Boston had reached just 50 degrees under gray skies with a cold driving rain, and it hardly appeared that new rules were in effect, with even stores like Trader Joe’s, which lifted its mask mandate for vaccinated shoppers May 14, filled with masked employees and customers.
Once again, the heavens rain on the globali$t agenda, and I bought my coffee and paper the last two days with mask loosely over mouth only and then none at all. No one said a word, and I feel sorry for this next soul.
As one customer at the Trader Joe’s on Memorial Drive in Cambridge put it, she will continue to wear her mask until the day “when no one is wearing a mask.”
At Quincy Market, well more than half of visitors and employees were masked Saturday morning, and perspectives on the matter ran a wide spectrum.
A visitor from North Carolina immediately took off his mask in the market after learning it was not required and announced his intention to only wear it outside — due to the weather.
“The only reason I’m wearing this thing is because I get wind burn,” said Michael Hall, 59.
“I think I’ll keep it forever,” Laura Rivas, 24, said of her mask, as she walked the hall with a group of fully vaccinated, mask-wearing visitors from Puerto Rico.
“Mask-achusetts,” said Eric Menzel, mocking the high number of people continuing to wearing masks in the state. “I think [mask-wearing] has to do with social shaming and norms. It’s a typical leader-follower scenario.”
Not only that, it literally makes you sick with the legendary CVD symptoms.
Menzel who had come from Ohio to celebrate his graduation from a Harvard University master’s program, even though in-person events were not offered by the school, said he has gotten judgmental looks from mask-wearers for not wearing one.
“You get the odd weird stare,” he said, adding that “people not wearing masks feel vindicated when you see another person” not wearing one.
“I don’t want to be different,” said Mark Lundein, longtime chef-owner of Walrus and the Carpenter Oyster Bar in Quincy Market on his decision to wear a mask, which he wore half-on Saturday morning. “I don’t want to make any statement by wearing or not wearing it.”
Lundein noted that there has been an uptick in business at the market and said the new rules should help.
“If today was 75 and sunny, it would probably be the best day,” he said, but many opted for traditional rainy day activities like a trip to the museum or the movies.
At the MFA, almost all patrons wore masks, even though they are optional. At Coolidge Corner Theatre in Brookline, mask-wearing was required and that put some cautious visitors at ease.
“I welcome a change to get closer to normal life,” said Michael Short, 81, of Wayland, as he waited for an afternoon screening of “2001: A Space Odyssey,” his first film in a theater in a year.
He remains cautious, and said he and his son and grandson, who joined him, would likely get takeout later Saturday rather than go maskless in a restaurant.
Okay, I will never go to a theater or restaurant again (not that there is anything worth seeing), and why are they showing 20-year-old movies in theaters and 50-year-old shows on TV?
Are they that bereft of ideas because only certain content is allowed?
Naomi Okeke, 17, a Boston University student, said the theater’s mask requirement put her at ease as she went to see her first movie at a theater in a year.
“Americans can’t be trusted with the honor system,” she said. “I’m happy to wear a mask for the rest of my life,” but back at Charlie’s, it was for the first time in a long time, an almost-normal day.
She won't be alive for long then!
The hole-in-the-wall joint opened at 7:30 in the morning and reached capacity by 9:30 a.m. with about 30 customers seated inside, according to Marciante, whose family bought the South End mainstay in 2017.
Servers handed out menus to customers lined up at the counter, a scene that was unthinkable only a few months ago, when the restaurant mostly relied on takeout service.
“It’s an amazing feeling, let me tell you,” Marciante said. “It feels so good.”
Related:
"Starting Saturday, fully vaccinated people don’t have to wear masks or practice social distancing. Capacity restrictions also ended for outdoor gatherings, as well as for restaurants and other businesses. People who are not vaccinated are being urged to continue with masks and adhere to distancing guidance, and everyone will still have to mask up when they board a plane, train, or bus — or if they are in a health care setting, officials have said. The governor will seek to keep some pandemic measures in place after the state of emergency ends, according to the statement. That includes special permits for expanded outside dining for restaurants, a suspension of state rules for meetings of public government boards, and protections for COVID-19 patients from surprise medical bills. Samuel Scarpino, a Northeastern University epidemiologist, said in a phone interview Saturday that the state has incredible progress with vaccinations, and that it is safe for fully vaccinated people to gather indoors, but he raised concerns about the threat posed to unvaccinated people by more-infectious variants, like one identified recently in India. The state must encourage greater vaccinations, and urged officials to develop incentives like in other states, which offer prizes to those who get vaccinated. Scarpino suggested people win a run around the bases at Fenway Park as a prize. “I’m hoping that we will see creative strategies to increase vaccinations,” he said. Scarpino urged those who have been vaccinated to be mindful of the health of anyone who has not received a vaccine shot....."
He went on to say that it is “just the basic thing we’ve been telling people for about a year now, which is just be conscious of the people that you are around, be respectful of their safety, and we can get through this together. We’ve gone through a whole year of trauma, and some people, even if they are vaccinated, aren’t going to be ready to take off their masks yet, and we need to give those people space and time and process all this. Maybe the word of the day is, ‘respectful,’ ” because after the experiences of the past year, many people may not want to drop their guards just yet, and he obviously didn't get the front-page memo.
If you can find a lodging it is time to break out the sunscreen, fill the cooler, pack a good book, and head down to the dock for an afternoon on the tip of Cape Cod during the vaccinated summer:
"It wasn’t the longed for idyllic summer kickoff, as visitors to Cape Cod seeking relief from the pandemic on the holiday weekend, with newly relaxed COVID-19 restrictions, were stuck with leaden skies, cold winds, and relentless rain, but hopes are high for a vibrant tourist season across the Cape as the pandemic fades and life moves toward normal. Across Cape Cod, business owners and employees who have spent the past 15 months trying to operate during a pandemic began adjusting to their new worlds. Masks are now optional. Tourists are coming back. And navigating how to make visitors feel welcome — while respecting the safety of workers — was the focus for many businesses....."
She said she sees many signs of a strong summer season ahead, and they buried the narrative-destroying snowstorm on page B2 as visits resume at state prisons provided mask requirements and other protocols remain in place as the state eases pandemic restrictions amid decreasing rates of coronavirus infection, and visitors are not required to be vaccinated but they must have their temperatures taken when they arrive at DOC facilities and must fill out an entrance form that will help identify potential coronavirus exposure factors and must use hand sanitizer and wear face coverings, meet only in designated areas separated by social distancing dividers with no physical contact.
Yup, everything is back to "normal" -- except for the mask.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I will know pry open that front section and aaaaaaaaaaaaah.....
"Plague of mice in Australia overruns farms, shops, and bedrooms" by Yan Zhuang New York Times, May 29, 2021
TOTTENHAM, Australia — The stench hits you first, pungent, musty and rotting. Then you hear them: a sound like ocean waves, or pouring rain hitting concrete, and the occasional squeak.
The horror lurking in the darkness is a throng of thousands of mice swarming above, around and inside a storage bunker of wheat at the Fragar family’s farm seven hours west of Sydney. After a long, painful drought, the mice are ravaging the family’s first good harvest in years and endangering the next one, putting their business on the brink of ruin.
Their farm is just one of thousands along the country’s eastern grain belt that are contending with what local residents call the worst mouse plague in living memory, with far-reaching consequences both in the fields and in rural communities.
It’s like “watching the mice eat away at your future,” said Kathy Fragar, 51.
For what has been half a year but felt to many like an eternity, the rodents have chewed a swath through southern Queensland, New South Wales and northern Victoria, the flip side to the good fortune of the break in a once-a-century drought.
In addition to devouring crops, they’ve bitten people in their beds, dropped out of air-conditioning units and gnawed through appliances. They’ve eaten the toes off chickens in their pens. They’ve been blamed as whole towns have lost phone reception and a house has burned down.
The mice have added unpleasant tasks to many people’s routines. Storekeepers set traps and drown the mice they catch. Residents burn dead mice in backyard “crematories.” Grocers clean up flour that spills onto the floor from nibbled packages. Hospital workers place diffusers in waiting rooms in a largely fruitless attempt to mask the stink of rotting rodent corpses.
At the Fragars’ farm, the mice scatter when the light hits them, sliding like a waterfall down the sides of a bright blue tarp and disappearing down holes and into the grass. For every visible mouse, there are countless more underneath the covering.
This also carries with it the stench of the CVD narrative!
A once-in-a-century plague with more cases than we know, blah, blah.
The family’s wheat bunker has visibly shrunk. The mice won’t eat their way through the whole thing — if they burrow too deep, they will suffocate, but Jeff Fragar, 55, said the family would be lucky to sell 500 of the 700 metric tonnes they had harvested. That could be $30,000 down the drain.
Other farmers have had crops rejected or turned away from ports after mouse droppings were found. Some, like Terry Klante, who farms near the Fragar family, have fended off the mice with baiting and fencing but still keep a nightly vigil, looking for signs of infestation.
Until it’s all over, the plague will continue to take a psychological toll in remote areas, where people are largely self-reliant and often face setbacks with the mindset that you take it on the chin and get on with it.
Jo Randall, who lives about 75 miles south of the Fragars, said she had been brought to tears one morning as she contemplated the extra work the mice were creating on top of an already laborious farm and home life.
The Randalls consider themselves lucky because they’ve been able to keep the mice out of their fields, through baiting and burning of the land, but they live in an old house, full of tiny cracks and holes for rodent intruders to slip through. She thought the last straw would be if the mice ever got into her bed, but when it actually happened — when she found droppings in her good sheets at 10:30 p.m. after an exhausting day — she just sighed, stripped the sheets and made the bed again.
“You’ve just got to resign to the fact that you’re not going to win the battle, you’re not going to get rid of them,” she said. “So you just do the best as you can and just wait for it to be over.”
It would keep me hopping, although I felt terrible when I murdered one who got in the house, and I was further told that Australia suffers a mouse plague every decade or so, and the current one came after bountiful rains last year that left farmers’ silos overflowing with grain. They stocked up on feed for their animals, and all that grain gave the mice a perfect source of food. Changes to farming practices have also been a factor. Crop farmers used to burn stubble to clear the land. Over the past 15 years, they’ve started sowing new crops directly onto the old stalks, for environmental reasons. That has had the unintended consequence of creating more sources of food and shelter for mice. These natural and human-made causes, along with the fast breeding cycles of mice — they can have six to 10 offspring every three weeks or so — have allowed their numbers to quickly explode into the millions. At the same time, government help has been slow to arrive.
Government not helping is nothing new, and print article conveniently left that out.
I wouldn't go back to Australia if I were you, with the threats and all (ugg, typical boorish behavior from colonialists), and according to my on the ground sources, my pre$$ is ignoring is the lockdown that has been reinstated.
That source ironically dovetails with the next horrifying article on the page:
"More than 200 bodies found at Indigenous school in Canada" by Associated Press May 29, 2021
KAMLOOPS, British Columbia (AP) — The remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, have been found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school — one of the institutions that held children taken from families across the nation.
Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation said in a news release that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of ground-penetrating radar.
More bodies may be found because there are more areas to search on the school grounds, Casimir said Friday.
It reminds me of the Irish orphanages, and in a strange way we have evil be unearthed around us in the midst of this CVD hell. Hmmmm (blog editor and author looks toward the heavens and thanks Thou).
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.
You get your kids out of those schools as fast as you can, wherever and whomever you are!
The Canadian government apologized in Parliament in 2008 and admitted that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages; they also lost touch with their parents and customs.
Indigenous leaders have cited that legacy of abuse and isolation as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.
A report more than five years ago by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission said at least 3,200 children had died amid abuse and neglect, and it said it had reports of at least 51 deaths at the Kamloops school alone between 1915 and 1963.
“This really resurfaces the issue of residential schools and the wounds from this legacy of genocide towards Indigenous people,” Terry Teegee, Assembly of First Nations regional chief for British Columbia, said Friday.
You, uh, gotta get behind the you-know-who first.
British Columbia Premier John Horgan said he was “horrified and heartbroken” to learn of the discovery, calling it a tragedy of “unimaginable proportions” that highlights the violence and consequences of the residential school system.
Hollow.
The Kamloops school operated between 1890 and 1969, when the federal government took over operations from the Catholic Church and operated it as a day school until it closed in 1978.
Casimir said it’s believed the deaths are undocumented, although a local museum archivist is working with the Royal British Columbia Museum to see if any records of the deaths can be found.....
Do numbers really matter when it comes to such atrocity?
There is more to read about the First Nations people, their families and communities, and I would encourage the reader to click on the link above; however, that is the very same province from which I sourced above regarding Australia, and there are a handful of other sites that linger and lurk up North. I vouch for them with blood regarding their veracity no matter where it leads. I salute them, and and the suspension of elections has also been ignored by my pre$$ while the gulags go up amidst Trudeau's insults (never mind the racist and sexist behavior).
What a turkey.... unlike this guy:
"After Erdogan angers a loyal province, opponents see an opportunity" by Carlotta Gall New York Times, May 29, 2021
IKIZDERE, Turkey — Villagers in the pristine woodlands of Rize province in northeastern Turkey have always had two natural advantages: a largely unspoiled landscape rich in wildlife and trout-filled streams, and the protective influence of the region’s most popular and powerful local citizen: President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but now, at a moment when Erdogan is under political pressure nationally, his home province has become a battleground pitting some of those villagers against the president. For weeks, they have staged protests against Erdogan’s plans for a quarry that threatens to destroy 220 acres of woods that rise steeply behind a cluster of houses and are an essential resource for the rural district of Ikizdere.
“This is our paradise,” said Gungor Bas, who lives in his grandfather’s house beside a stream already choked with mud deposited by excavators. “We used to drink from the stream, but for the last 10 days, we have to drink bottled water.”
Welcome to the government-driven club.
They change the regulations then poison the water in a preview of what is to come!
The protests over the quarry last month were notable because they erupted in Rize, the loyal home province of Erdogan on the Black Sea coast. His political opponents seized on it as an opportunity to undermine the already embattled leader, who is on the defensive over the precarious state of the economy and the fallout from the pandemic.
The continuing demonstrations in Ikizdere began at the end of April, and opposition politicians, eager to exploit any cracks in Erdogan’s grip on power, rushed to the district in support as government officials moved in to suppress the protests.
Erdogan no longer tolerates protests — except those by his supporters — and the riot police have used a heavy hand to quash the demonstrations in Rize.
We are there, too!
The quarry, near the village of Gurdere, is the latest of numerous big projects that Erdogan has championed to generate growth and employment in the country over the past 19 years. With unemployment and inflation running high, he has promised his supporters even more of them.
Erdogan’s opponents say that big business takes priority and that the government and law enforcement are in the service of the construction companies rather than the people.
Protests heated up amid a recent spike in COVID infections, and villagers defied a strict lockdown to confront riot police.....
It's like looking into a mirror, and the New York Times has a lot more to say, including the heart of what is wrong with Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian leadership and cronyism: corruption and links to organized crime.
Not surprising since Turkey is no longer in our camp and poses a roadblock to US designs via its nexus as a geographical location and alliances with Russia and Iran.
Yeah, how can you talk to a guy like that, and speaking of brutal and eccentric strongmen (what a complement coming from them), I will simply say I am sick of the disingenuous whining of the pre$$ as everyone falls into line in what feels like the 21st-century's Gary Powers moment on the eve of the possible summit in Geneva -- a dramatic gambit apparently ordered by the country's authoritarian president to suppress dissent in what the West called a state-sponsored hijacking of an activist who refused to live in fear and the crisis tightens the awkwardness for Putin (cui bono?) as he is forced to embrace an eccentric and brutal leader in the mold of Bolsonaro, Duda, Kim Jong Un, Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela, and the aforementioned Erdogan (pretty good company, wouldn't you agree?).
Word on the street is they are gunning for Obrador while Netanyahu is out because of Gaza (just as I said, readers!). Cuba is already sunk without the Castros, and it now looks like Ethiopia has gone bad.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I turn the page again and find myself transported to the Old West in the form of Texas:
"Gun buying spiked during the pandemic. It’s still up" by Sabrina Tavernise New York Times, May 29, 2021
WASHINGTON — It was another week with another horrific mass shooting. In cities across the country, gun homicides were climbing. Democrats and Republicans argued over the causes. President Biden said enough, but beneath the timeworn political cycle on guns in the United States, the country’s appetite for firearms has only been increasing, with more being bought by more Americans than ever before.
While gun sales have been climbing for decades — they often spike in election years and after high-profile crimes — Americans have been on an unusual, prolonged buying spree fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, the protests last summer and the fears they both stoked, and the buying continued, through the protests in the summer and the election in the fall, until a week this spring broke the record with 1.2 million background checks.
“There was a surge in purchasing unlike anything we’ve ever seen,” said Dr. Garen J. Wintemute, a gun researcher at the University of California, Davis. “Usually it slows down, but this just kept going.”
Not only were people who already had guns buying more, but people who had never owned one were buying them too, and the data, which has not been previously released, showed that new owners were less likely than usual to be male and white. Half were women, one-fifth were Black and one-fifth were Hispanic.
What I will say here is if more women were armed there would be less rapes.
I'm not kidding, and I can't help but wonder if this is why the tyranny might be called off if that is in fact happening.
The flip side of the issue is AMMO because the gun is useless without that. My sources say there are shortages and government is armed to the teeth, so.... you do the math. The problem is the overt totalitarian force that would be needed and the complete removing of the "mask" of "democracy."
Public image still counts for something, and dictatorships that do that are on their deathbeds.
In all, the data found that 39% of U.S. households own guns. That is up from 32% in 2016, according to the General Social Survey, a public opinion poll conducted by a research center at the University of Chicago. Researchers said it was too early to tell whether the uptick represents a reversal from the past 20 years, in which ownership was basically flat.
It's another “arms race” with ourselves as the surge in gun violence in South Los Angeles has been particularly sharp.
Now the gun debate is once again taking center stage, this time at a moment of hardening political division and deepening distrust. Sales usually spike around elections, but the sheer volume this time is notable. It also gives a worrying glimpse into the way that Americans view one another — as people they want to protect themselves from.
???!!!
Who has promoted that fear, 'eh?
As the country’s major political parties move further apart, so does the legislation that flows from them — and like voting rights and abortion, guns are no exception. This month, Texas became the 20th state to pass legislation that says a permit is not required to carry a concealed handgun, according to Anne S. Teigen, an expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Illinois and the city of San Jose, California, where nine people were killed in a mass shooting this past week, are considering bills that would tax things like ammunition and certain types of guns.
Yeah, the San Jose guy was allegedly armed to the teeth (box checked), you can't believe a word coming from Illinois, and Texas is on the hot seat for so many things, the least of which has to be the outright celebration of freedom encapsulated by a full ballpark of unmasked people enjoying food and drink (as is Florida), and I cannot help but think those images have somewhat led to our current loosening of tyranny to some extent as even the $ports fans must have started questioning what the hell is going on?!
They can have fun and we can't?
There is no single reason for the surge, but social scientists point to many potential drivers.
“There is a breakdown in trust and a breakdown in a shared, common reality,” said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who writes about political violence. “There is also all this social change, and social change is scary.”
The Northeastern and Harvard data come from a survey of 19,000 people conducted in April. Researchers found that about 6.5% of U.S. adults bought guns in 2020, or about 17 million people. That was up from 5.3% in 2019, said Dr. Matthew Miller, a professor of public health research at Northeastern, who conducted the study with Deborah Azrael, a researcher at Harvard, suggesting that the trend did not start with the pandemic.
As for gun owners overall in 2021, he said, 63% were male, 73% were white, 10% were Black and 12% were Hispanic.
The pandemic accelerated a trend of rising gun sales. According to The Trace, a news outlet that tracks gun sales, purchases have been rising steadily over the past decade, with a jump around the beginning of 2013, after the Sandy Hook shooting. Sales did not change much under former President Donald Trump, but they exploded in 2020, up by 64% from the previous year. The single highest month last year was in June as protests swept across the country after the murder of George Floyd.
The pace has continued this year. The government does not track the number of guns sold in the United States. Even the federal background check data do not give a complete picture, as many sales are private. Estimates of the total number of guns in circulation range as high as 400 million.....
That's when they hit a blank in the chamber with the lie, so.....
The New York Times kept firing as they grabbed for your guns, and while research has shown that higher gun prevalence is associated with a higher rate of gun deaths — including suicide — the question of whether a sudden surge in gun sales prompts a corresponding rise in gun violence does not have a clear answer, but nevertheless the buying surge is worrying as we have “just turned the corner into some really awful territory.”
No thought as to whether masks influence the gunfire, although history may provide a guide, 'eh?
Just don't end up in one of their jails:
"11 jailers fired for beating, stripping a detainee who died during Texas winter storm" by Meryl Kornfield The Washington Post, May 29, 2021
Eleven jail employees have been fired and several others suspended following the death of a detainee who was stripped naked and beaten during the severe winter storm in Texas, the Harris County sheriff announced Friday.
Jaquaree Simmons, 23, died in February from blunt force trauma to the head and a brain bleed the day after he was beaten by jail workers out of view from security cameras, Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said. Three months after Simmons's death, investigators said they concluded detention officers committed serious policy violations, including using excessive force, failing to document the use of force, failing to intervene and making false statements during the course of the investigation. The jail workers, 11 who were terminated and six suspended without pay, may also face criminal charges, said the sheriff, adding that the workers betrayed his and the community's trust.
I'm afraid the problems are only going to get worse.
"They escalated, rather than de-escalated, the situation," Gonzalez said of the employees. "Their conduct was unacceptable and inexcusable, and has discredited them, the Sheriff's Office, and their fellow employees. None of them deserve to wear the Harris County Sheriff's Office patch ever again."
Gonzalez emphasized that the force used against Simmons was done out of view of the 1,490 security cameras operating inside the 1.4-million-square-foot jail complex, making the investigation "especially difficult."
Gonzalez said he felt "very upset and heartbroken" in the wake of the findings, stressing the agency's efforts to hold those responsible for Simmons's death accountable. Amid a national reckoning about police use of force, Gonzalez underscored that officers' misbehavior would not be tolerated by the sheriff's office.
You will that across the vast majority of America, the sheriff's are the best of the law enforcement lot. It's not Andy Griffith, but they are usually the the least corrupt and most honest.
The Harris County Deputies Organization, a union that represents sheriff's office employees, did not immediately respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post. It is unclear if the union represents the workers who were terminated or suspended.
Simmons was initially jailed on Feb. 10 on a weapons charge and put in quarantine due to coronavirus precautions taken at the jail at the time, the sheriff said. Six days later, Simmons used his clothing to clog the toilet in his cell, causing the room to flood, jail officials reported. When detention officers came into the cell to clean it, they used force against him, although it was not documented, the sheriff's office found. Simmons was then left naked in his cell on one of the coldest days of the year.
When I read that, the first thing I thought of was TORTURE!
The second thing was, it is IN FACT a CVD DEATH but INDIRECTLY and NOT COUNTED in this case like all the suicides and such.
When an officer came back to his cell that night to deliver a meal, Simmons allegedly threw his food tray and charged at the officer, who punched Simmons in the face, according to the investigation. Deputies who escorted Simmons to receive medical evaluation used force again but did not document it, despite Simmons suffering multiple blows to his head, the sheriff's office said.
Simmons had a cut to his left eyebrow and upper lip, the medical staff recorded. Power was out inside the jail because of the winter storm, so the medical staff ordered an X-ray as soon as possible, but he was never taken back to the clinic even after power was restored, investigators found.
Jailers also did not document required hourly visual checks on Simmons's cell pod until minutes before they found him unresponsive on Feb. 17, another violation of policy, according to investigators. Simmons was taken to a hospital, where doctors pronounced him dead.
His mother, Larhonda Biggles, told the Houston Chronicle that her son, who suffered from mental health issues, was arrested shortly after leaving her birthday party.
Happy Birthday, Mom!
My heart goes out to her, but that seems to be such a small thing considering the unnecessary loss.
After his death was ruled a homicide by the medical examiner, she told the newspaper she was still searching for clues about how he could have died after a week in Harris County Jail....
Yeah, “somebody needs to be held accountable for what happened,” and yet it seems no one ever is in America unless they need to be removed for ulterior purposes when it comes to our JU$TU$ $y$tem, a pervasion of the greatest system of justice yet invented.
Now that Biden intends to remake the immigration system and undo much of his predecessor’s legacy, they can fill those jails back up with white gun-owners as the walls come tumbling down in more ways than one:
"Advocates in US push new efforts to bring back deportees" by Claudia Torrens and Gisela Salomon the Associated Press, May 29, 2021
MIAMI — He's from Guadalajara, Mexico, but his life was in Chicago. After 15 years in the city, he was deported a year ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With President Biden in office, one of the new proposals from advocates urges creating a centralized Department of Homeland Security office to consider requests from deported immigrants trying to reunite with their families in the U.S.
It's a long shot: White House officials have never publicly mentioned the idea, and it doesn’t yet have a supporter in Congress. The campaign, however, shows how immigrant advocacy has become emboldened after four years hardline immigration policies under former President Donald Trump.
It also shows how varied ambitions are among pro-immigrant advocates.
Many are focused instead on immigration bills that have passed the House but appear stalled in the Senate as large numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the border have weakened the White House’s position. Another bill Biden proposed to offer a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally includes some provisions for a chance for deportees to come back to the U.S., but the Biden administration has not spoken publicly or answered questions about the possibility of regularly considering those requests.
More than 700,000 immigrants have been deported from the U.S. in the last three fiscal years, according to federal data. U.S. law includes ways for deportees to return, but they rarely succeed.
For some deportees, the change of administration offers hope.....
That evaporates once you get here.
The Globe continues the hating on Texas as I flip through the pages:
"A man with a chain saw attacked Black Lives Matter protesters in South Texas. Could it spark a conversation about Latinos, race, and racism?" by Jazmine Ulloa Globe Staff, May 29, 2021
MCALLEN, Texas — In this region of South Texas where Donald Trump made massive inroads with Latino voters last November, shattering stubborn notions of this slice of the electorate as a monolithic bloc, but an under-discussed issue — one that Latina activists like Jessenia Herzberg, 21, and Lorena Houghton, 20, two idealistic college students outraged over the recent killing of George Floyd and racial injustice, faced head-on last June 5 — flows just under the surface: racism and disapproval of the Black Lives Matter movement among a swath of the Latino community.
One wonders how in the hell he "lost" that election (hint: he didn't, he won in a landslide for what it is worth and the only problem is reinstalling him would cause more problems than it's worth).
Trump made white nationalism, racial division, and bigotry signature features of his presidency, and much has been made of how this motivated some of his white supporters. Through the summer of demonstrations after Floyd’s murder, he often used coded — and not so coded — language to blast Black Lives Matter protests, calling participants “thugs,” and once promised that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts.” When activists tore down and defaced statues they saw as glorifying Confederates, he signed an order to prosecute anyone who did so to the fullest extent of the law.
While many in the political world simplistically assumed these dog-whistle gestures would turn off all people of color, many Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley and across the nation, who enthusiastically rode in “Trump trains” and flew his flags, gravitated to the rhetoric and even celebrated it. To many, he was not a racist or a bigot, but a successful businessman unfairly maligned by the press and someone who stood up for police, as a Latina GOP House candidate in McAllen put it recently, amid a rise in “the monsterizing” of law enforcement that they saw on the left.
Now Trump is gone, but Trumpism is not. Republicans continue to try to harness the racial and ethnic anxiety that stirred Trump’s base heading into the 2022 midterms, passing laws intended to limit the way race can be taught in schools even as they paint Democrats as “woke” enforcers of political correctness and censorship.
Republicans’ focus on race as a political battlefield might have more of an impact on the way Latinos vote than those waging political campaigns yet understand. While often lumped together vaguely with “people of color” who are presumed to vote Democratic, Latinos are a multiethnic and multiracial population with complex and varied views on race and politics. Even as some Latinos in the Rio Grande Valley and elsewhere felt repelled by Trump’s rhetoric targeting Black people, others embraced it.
These forces collided last summer on Main Street in downtown McAllen.
You read this stuff and it is an I'm rubber, your glue situation when it comes to the pre$$.
They are guilty of the accusations they make against others.
In El Paso, where a self-proclaimed white supremacist killed 23 people at a Walmart, acting on fears fueled by Trump and Texas Republicans of a Hispanic “invasion,” some conservative Hispanics who had survived the attack denounced protesters tearing down statues that celebrated white supremacy, saying it was disrespectful to their adopted country.
In Houston, Hope Cruz, 64, decked in a hot pink “Latinas for Trump” shirt, was part of a Trump train that thwarted several campaign stops by surrogates for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden in the fall, shouting, “I am not oppressed.”
Turns out McAllen is a place where they’re proud of its binational border culture, and where class and racial divides weren’t as stark growing up, but....
McAllen has moved on. On a hot spring day here, cumbia beats played inside the discount store that served as the backdrop in viral videos of Peña revving his chain saw. Inside, an employee said she had been working that day but hadn’t heard the commotion over the music. She couldn’t remember why it all started.
The Grande Narrative has helped spark new connections among many in the Valley, but those conversations had not seemed to reach Republicans at Hidalgo County headquarters, where an energetic group of rising Latinas now head the party and plan to make Trump’s improvement in the region a permanent shift. Questioning Latina and Latino Republicans here about how they were reckoning with the racist rhetoric now part of the party’s mainstream discourse was met with pushback that it was, in fact, Democrats who insisted on making everything about race.
“I was called a coconut,” said Mayra Flores, an up-and-coming Republican politician who was born in Tamaulipas and is making a bid for US Representative Filemon Vela’s seat. She was referring to the derogatory term used to describe Latinos seen as “brown on the outside, white on the inside” — a word she said had been used against her simply for being conservative, which she pointed out was racist in itself, but here, like across the country, Latinos have fought against exclusion from political power and participation. By focusing much of his rhetoric on painting Black Lives Matter protesters as criminals during the election, Trump may have tapped into a longtime desire among some to officially belong in America’s white mainstream.
Local Republicans reject that theory, however, and contend race played little, if anything, into the party’s surge here. The GOP party here was ready to move on from Trump, just as the skies broke with rain.....
Good Lord, God IS EVERYWHERE!
Related:
Time to hit the books:
"State GOP lawmakers try to limit teaching about race, racism" by Bryan Anderson The Associated Press, May 29, 2021
RALEIGH, N.C. — Teachers and professors in Idaho will be prevented from “indoctrinating” students on race. Oklahoma teachers will be prohibited from saying certain people are inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. Tennessee schools will risk losing state aid if their lessons include particular concepts about race and racism.
Governors and legislatures in Republican-controlled states across the country are moving to define what race-related ideas can be taught in public schools and colleges, a reaction to the nation’s racial reckoning after last year’s police killing of George Floyd. The measures have been signed into law in at least three states and are being considered in many more.
Educators and education groups are concerned that the proposals will have a chilling effect in the classroom and that students could be given a whitewashed version of the nation’s history. Teachers are also worried about possible repercussions if a student or parent complains.
It is what we were all taught, a pack of lies, agreed upon.
“Once we remove the option of teachers incorporating all parts of history, we’re basically silencing the voices of those who already feel oppressed,” said Lakeisha Patterson, a third-grade English and social studies teacher who lives in Houston and worries about a bill under consideration in Texas.
Oh, now Free Speech matters?
At least 16 states are considering or have signed into law bills that would limit the teaching of certain ideas linked to “critical race theory,” which seeks to reframe the narrative of American history. Its proponents argue that federal law has preserved the unequal treatment of people on the basis of race and that the country was founded on the theft of land and labor.
Those states include Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia.
The latest state to implement a law is Tennessee, where the governor this past week signed a bill to ban the teaching of critical race theory in schools.
The legislative debate over that bill caused a stir earlier this month when a Republican lawmaker who supports it, state Rep. Justin Lafferty, wrongly declared that the Constitution’s original provision designating a slave as three-fifths of a person was adopted for “the purpose of ending slavery.” Historians largely agree that the compromise gave slaveholding states more political power.
Some other states have taken steps that fall short of legislative change.
Those would be Utah, Georgia, and Montana.
Republicans have said concepts suggesting that people are inherently racist or that America was founded on racial oppression are divisive and have no place in the classroom.
Earlier this month, Republicans in the North Carolina House moved to prohibit teachers from promoting seven concepts that critically examine race and racism, including the belief that a person’s race or sex determines their moral character, that people bear responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex, and that they should feel guilty because of those two characteristics.
MLK has to be twirling at light speed over this.
Rep. John Torbett, a Republican who leads North Carolina’s House education committee, said the legislation was intended to promote equality, not rewrite history.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, executive director of the African American Policy Forum, was among those who helped popularize critical race theory in the 1970s and 1980s as a response to what she and others felt was a lack of progress following passage of civil rights legislation in the 1960s.
She said Republicans are twisting the concept to inflame racial tensions and motivate their base of mostly white supporters.
“This is a 2022 strategy to weaponize white insecurity, to mobilize ideas that have been mobilized again and again throughout history, using a concept or set of ideas that they can convince people is the new boogeyman,” Crenshaw said.
The boundary between teaching ideas and promoting them has stirred concern among teachers and racial justice scholars.
Do you know what color Communi$m comes in?
It used to be Red, but it is actually Green now.
Uncertainty about that boundary could cause teachers to avoid difficult conversations about American history, said Cheryl Harris, a UCLA Law School professor who teaches a course on critical race theory.
“For anybody who’s ever taught in a classroom, the idea is to get the conversation flowing, and you can’t do that if you’re preoccupied with which side of the line are you going to be on,” Harris said. “That is a chilling effect, and that is every bit as offensive to the First Amendment as a direct ban.”
Go tweet Trump about it, I mean, Facebook him.
Opponents of the North Carolina bill say it’s a solution in search of a problem. Tamika Walker Kelly, president of the North Carolina Association of Educators, said the bill’s promoters could not point to any school in the state where students were being indoctrinated in certain racial concepts.
Like everything presented to us in the agenda-pushing pre$$.
That’s just one reason the bill faces an uphill climb. The press secretary for Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper said the governor believes instruction should be honest and accurate, and that students need to be taught to think critically.
So that is why North Carolina is so backwards right now despite being held by Trump in 2020.
The legislation also faces skepticism from the Republican leader of the state Senate, where it will be considered next.
“I don’t like making it illegal to teach a certain doctrine, as wrong as that doctrine may be, while saying the reason for that ban is freedom of thought,” Sen. Phil Berger said in a statement. “That strikes me as a contradiction."
That's when the dismissal bell rang, thank God.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Then, just as it appeared that we were out of the forest.....
"Vietnam’s Health Ministry announced Saturday that it had detected a highly transmissible new variant of the coronavirus that has helped fuel a recent wave of COVID-19 infections in the country. Genetic sequencing indicated that the new variant was a mix of the coronavirus strains first detected in the United Kingdom and India, said Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long, according to the VnExpress newspaper. The minister said that the new variant was particularly contagious via air and that viral cultures have revealed that it replicates extremely quickly, the newspaper reported. ’'The new variant is very dangerous,’' Long said in a statement. The Health Ministry didn’t return a Saturday afternoon request for comment. Scientists said that further study was needed to determine the effect of a variant in ’'real world settings.’' ’'A lot of different mutations happen as the virus is transmitted and most of them are not of clinical significance,’' said Todd Pollack, a Hanoi-based infectious-disease expert at Harvard Medical School. ’'Just because they say [the new variant] has features of one and the other . . . doesn’t mean they got together in one patient and spit out some combined hybrid ‘supervirus.’’' There were seven known coronavirus variants in Vietnam before Long’s announcement, according to Reuters. Vietnam, which has reported around 6,400 covid-19 infections and 47 deaths, has been one of the world’s coronavirus containment success stories. A well-run public health care system, quarantine camps operated by the military and strict, targeted lockdowns kept case numbers low until late April, when a spike in infections began."
It's coming your way as we are treated to a repeat of early 2020.
Nothing to worry about -- yet -- but there is going to be a Covid-26 and Covid-32 so forget the concerts:
"Thousands of people packed inside a Paris arena for a concert Saturday as part of a public health experiment to prepare France to host big events again. The show at AccorHotels Arena in eastern Paris featured 1980s French rock band Indochine and DJ Etienne de Crecy. But the attention was mostly on the concert-goers. The Paris public hospital authority helped organize the event to determine whether it’s safe to allow 5,000 people wearing masks to dance together in the open pit of an indoor concert without social distancing. The attendees got to see the show for free but were required to take three virus tests, two before and one after the concert. To further reduce risk, organizers only allowed people 18-45 years old without underlying health conditions to participate, according to the hospital authority. France’s cultural venues were shut for most of the past 14 months as authorities tried to contain persistent surges of virus infections that filled hospitals and were linked to more than 109,000 deaths."
The narrative of misleading and deceptive lies is enough as Macron presides over another genocide(?) and greenwa$hes the masses and really sticks it to them, and have you ever noticed that when he is in political trouble a false flag, 'er, terror attack occurs?
Let's hope it doesn't lead to war, and meanwhile, in their former colony:
"Lebanon’s health authorities launched a COVID-19 vaccination “marathon” to speed up inoculations around the country, including areas where turnout has so far been low. The daylong campaign offered AstraZeneca vaccines at 30 different centers around the country without advance appointments to encourage people over age 30 to show up. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, was not included in the campaign. As of Saturday afternoon, 7,700 people had been vaccinated in the push. A vaccination program that started in February targeted older age groups, primarily through registration on a government-operated platform and appointments. Photos of lines outside centers north of Beirut showed high turnout for the appointment-less drive, particularly among foreign workers, many of whom had been reluctant or unable to register on the government-operated digital platform. There were also lines in towns and villages in the east and mountains, where turnout has so far been fickle. So far, over 700,000 people have been vaccinated in the country of 6 million. Lebanon has reported a total of 530,000 confirmed cases and 7,700 deaths since February 2020."
This post is long enough so I will skip this run, and Vietnam is the model, right?
So the workers then take the bioweapon they have been injected with and take it home?
Is that why the Powers That Shouldn't Be are now allowing us to mix?
Or is that a tactic of division yet again?
As an aside, have you noticed that the probe into the explosion in the port of Beirut has gone down that crater of a rabbit hole?
The silence is deafening when one wishes to identify perps.
Meanwhile, back on the continent:
"Coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are plummeting across the continent, after Europe led the world in new cases last fall and winter in waves that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, forced more rolling lockdowns and overwhelmed intensive care units. Now, vaccination rates are accelerating across Europe, and with them, the promise of summer vacations on Ibiza, Crete or Corsica. There are hopes for a rebirth of a tourism industry that in Spain and Italy alone accounts for 13% of gross domestic product but was wiped out by the pandemic. Europe saw the largest decline in new COVID-19 infections and deaths this week compared with any other region, while also reporting about 44% of adults had received at least one dose of vaccine, according to the World Health Organization and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Europe’s seven-day rolling average for new cases per 100,000 people had been higher than any other region from mid-October through the beginning of December, then from early February through April, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Now, no European country is among the top 10 for new cases per 100,000 people."
I would avoid Spain because it's apparently a war zone after they deployed their military to the Moroccan border and expelled nearly half of the thousands of migrants who jumped fences or swam onto European soil over two days after Rabat loosened border controls amid a deepening diplomatic spat and found themselves embroiled in an African war with two Spanish journalists killed in Burkina Faso by armed groups linked to the Islamic State and Al Qaeda with the killings come amid a worsening security situation in the Sahel, especially in the border area of Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger where the only reporters are freelance who send letters back at quite an expense.
They say Chad could have helped, but you know, and as for Italy, it seems to be the heart of Evil as it all comes crashing down.
Meanwhile, back in the States:
"Oklahoma state agencies are barred from requiring a mask or coronavirus vaccination as a condition of being allowed to enter a state building or office under an executive order signed by Governor Kevin Stitt. “It is time to return to normal,” Stitt said in a statement after signing the order Friday. “Every Oklahoman must have access to all government services whether or not they choose to be vaccinated or wear a mask.” The order takes effect Tuesday. It was announced after Stitt signed into law a bill prohibiting schools and colleges from adopting mask or vaccination requirements. It, does not apply in medical settings with patients, Stitt refused to issue a statewide mask mandate but in November required masks inside state buildings, an order he lifted in March. The Oklahoma State Department of Health on Friday reported 452,777 total coronavirus cases since the pandemic began and 1,214 currently active cases in the state."
Honestly, I pray God watch over these brave governors for bucking the madness and suspect their states will be targeted with some sort of psyops.
"Georgia Governor Brian Kemp declared Friday that public schools no longer have his permission to require masks for coronavirus protection, though his executive order fell short of banning such mandates outright. The Republican governor’s written order came two days after Kemp declared: “The time for mandates is over.” “We’re not going to have a mask mandate for our kids,” Kemp said. “Our teachers have had the ability to get vaccinated. It certainly doesn’t keep anyone from wearing a mask.” The actual order adjusting Georgia’s few remaining coronavirus restrictions isn’t so strongly worded. Instead, Kemp’s order says Georgia school districts can no longer claim their authority to require masks comes from the governor. It’s unclear how many Georgia districts ever required employees and students to wear masks. While a number of Atlanta school districts enforced the requirement, many districts in outer suburbs and rural areas only strongly recommended masks. Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said school boards can likely require teachers and staff to wear masks without the governor’s permission, much like they impose dress codes."
Him not so much given the electoral fraud there, and let's hope you don't need to import any birth control pills, ladies:
"The Biden administration is urging a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit that could stand in the way of Florida and other states importing prescription drugs from Canada. In a legal brief filed Friday, the White House argues that the lawsuit filed last year on behalf of U.S. pharmaceutical companies was premature because the federal government has yet to approve any importation programs. The administration’s legal filing came on the same day Florida’s Republican governor, who is considering a run for the White House in 2024, called on the Biden administration to approve its drug importation application. Florida and New Mexico are the only two states thus far to formally ask the U.S. government to allow federally approved drugs to be imported from Canada, arguing that doing so would save Americans millions of dollars. Other states are poised to follow, despite a lawsuit raising concerns over safety and costs that was filed by the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, the trade group that represents U.S. drug producers. In its legal filing, President Joe Biden’s administration argues that drug companies “pre-emptively launched this wholesale attack” on a program that has yet to be implemented. “Although two proposals have been submitted to FDA, no timeline exists for the agency to make a decision,” the government’s motion states. In November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under then-President Donald Trump issued a ruling, which DeSantis said was based largely on Florida’s plan, further opening the door for states to pursue importing prescription drugs. That same month, the trade group filed its lawsuit....."
He is bucking the agenda on every front and here comes hurricane season!
At least “all turned out well for Mambo, who is actually living a wonderful life. He has his own bedroom in a house and is getting spoiled rotten” in the hole in the ground that he calls a house.
They say no man is an island, and he should have read the fine print.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Just the check the gas before you leave and stay awake at the wheel lest ye be devoured by crocodiles, or better yet, take public transport but not at night if you are smart.
"Democrats are striking a more urgent tone on negotiations over President Joe Biden’s infrastructure plan, as a compromise remains elusive after weeks of talks and measured optimism from both sides. In political talk shows on Sunday, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said a clear direction on the plan is needed by June 7, when members of Congress return from a week-long recess....."
They say it's a “fish-or-cut-bait moment for a generational investment in American infrastructure,” and after decades of failing to curb sexual assault in the armed forces, lawmakers and Pentagon leaders are poised to make major changes in military laws that many experts have long argued stand in the way of justice because “the tide has turned.” The Army has put a civilian in charge of criminal probes and added staff to assist in the creation of a Civilian Climate Corps to confront the intersecting crises of the coronavirus pandemic, racial injustice, economic inequality, and climate change.
I forget their names, but I'm not sweating the nostalgia on the screen ruled by the artificial intelligence that will make you sick.
As long as it makes someone else look good, right?
I don't know what a makeover could do for the arrogant prince or Black militants, but I'm sure they send their best wishes:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson posed with his wife Carrie Johnson in the garden of 10 Downing Street following their wedding at Westminster Cathedral, May 29, 2021 in London, England (Handout/Downing Street via Getty Images)
He is 56, she is 33, (gag), and do you see what's missing there?
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
I now have a confession to make(?).
Since the capacity restrictions were lifted, I watched a hockey game. I wanted to check the crowd to see what people were wearing and it was a relief(?) to see most of them unmasked.
The Globe was worried if there will there be some rogue fan emerging with racist remarks to justify Irving’s concerns and that Irving prove that Boston isn’t as progressive as it likes to believe it is, and after calling out Boston fans he had a subpar Game 3 Friday night at the Garden before rebounding with a stellar performance yesterday and I was also please with the result of the Laker game.
I don't watch baseball anymore, and there is no football to watch; however, I was told that the NFL would not be requiring vaccinations to play but then I read that the new COVID protocols for 2021 are as follows:
"Fully vaccinated players will not have to do daily testing; wear a mask at a team facility; quarantine after being exposed to a COVID-positive individual; adhere to travel restrictions; or adhere to capacity limits in the weight room. They also can eat in the cafeteria, use the sauna or steam room, and interact with vaccinated family and friends during travel. Conversely, non-vaccinated players are subject to the opposite: They must do daily testing, wear a mask, quarantine, avoid family members while traveling, etc. Basically, a player’s life will be difficult and he will be putting his roster spot in jeopardy if he doesn’t get a vaccine....."
The signals couldn't be any clearer even with the crowd noise, and I'm told it's all about “education, it’s about incentives, it’s making sure people understand the importance of vaccination.”
It's enough to give you a concussion and put you on the CVD list!
"Mark Eaton, the 7-foot-4 shot-blocking king who twice was the NBA’s defensive player of the year during a career spent entirely with the Utah Jazz, has died. He was 64. The team announced his death Saturday but did not give a cause or details, saying only that it was “unexpected.”
I think you know what I'm thinking, or do I need to mouth the words to you?
"Gavin MacLeod achieved stardom as Murray Slaughter, the sardonic TV news writer on the 1970s comedy “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” and he went to a lead role, and bigger fame, as the cheerful Capt. Stubing on “The Love Boat,” has died. He was a journeyman actor when he landed roles on two of the most successful television series of the 1970s and ’80s — as news writer Murray Slaughter on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” and Capt. Merrill Stubing on “The Love Boat.” “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” ran from 1970-77 and became one of the most acclaimed comedies in television history. “The Love Boat,” which revolved around MacLeod’s affable white-suited captain and a crew of regulars, ventured into new television territory by offering simultaneous plotlines in each episode, all having to do with the humorous and amorous adventures of the cruise ship’s passengers, played by guest stars, but unlike “The Mary Tyler Moore Show,” which was acclaimed for its writing and its willingness to defy the sanitized conventions of situation comedy, “The Love Boat,” produced by Aaron Spelling, was vilified by critics as just another example of safe, formulaic TV comedy. MacLeod defended the show. “I don’t care if it reflects life or not,” he said. “I love happy endings. Life’s so heavy these days that people want to escape.”
Bravo for him because I feel the same way when I come across the show, and who cares if it is Spelling slop with second-rate never-wases and washed up has-been actors and actresses?
It carried a GOOD MORAL MESSAGE, something in short supply today!
The cause was apparently unknown but he had recently had health issues after being born again (must have been what he saw in Hollywood) and he is now sleeping with the mermaids.
Oddly enough, the sun came out as I heard the calling and SOMETHING WEIRD and DIVINE is DEFINITELY GOING ON!
UPDATE:
I went to bed after the second period, and I'm kind of bummed that I missed a rocking third period with that capacity crowd before defeat, although I must confess that I am an Islander fan from way back (what, no mention on Nystrom or Morrow?) as the innocent child in me felt sorry for the worst team in hockey history, imho.
As an aside, I didn't look at any basketball for the obvious reasons, and as I entered the store with no mask this morning I was met by a customer without one as well; however, the workers still have them on for whatever reason.
Furthermore, I was greeted by not one, not two, but three rabbits this morning as well as a brown-headed cowbird who can't understand his reflection in my windshield isn't another bird.
Oh, the wonders of this God-given world.
Thank you, Lord.
