Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Hawaii Gov. David Ige is begging tourists to stay away from the islands as the state is suffering a wildfire pandemic of COVID delta brought on by visitors.

In a news conference on Monday, Ige encouraged visitors and residents to reduce travel to essential business activities.

“It is a risky time to be traveling right now,” Ige said, adding, “It is not a good time to travel to the islands.”

The governor warned that tourists would not have the “typical holiday” they expect when visiting the islands due to restrictions including limited restaurant capacity and limited access to rental cars.

“I encourage everyone to restrict and curtail travel to Hawaii, residents and visitors alike. It is not a good time to travel to the islands.”

In a separate statement, the Hawaii Tourism Authority said residents and visitors should delay nonessential travel through the end of October.

Ige’s comments come as the state has struggled to deal with a rise in coronavirus infections.

Elizabeth Char, director of Hawaii’s Department of Health, said in a statement that the surge was due to community followed by residents flying to hot spot areas and traveling home.

“If things do not change, our health care systems will be crippled and those needing medical care for all types of diseases, injuries and conditions, including our visitors, may find it difficult to get the treatment they need right away,” Char said.

Hawaii has reported 9,389 new coronavirus infections in the past two weeks, according to state data. The state has reported 56,670 new cases since the pandemic began, and 564 cumulative deaths.

 

It's not like Texas or Florida, where Republican governors are getting help from neighboring states, it's Hawaii, where the closest land is the California coast some 2,400 miles away. This is all taking place at the height of Hawaii's tourist season, too.

Stay home, America.  It's not April 2020.

It's worse.

It's About Suppression, Con't

North Carolina, like all Southern states, makes convicted felons have to jump through various hoops to have their voting rights restored once they have served their time, and most Southern states make those hoops so onerous that getting the right to vote back is nearly impossible. Republicans have long used the tactic to harm Black voters in order to keep them off the voter rolls for life after serving prison time for a felony.

That is, until Monday's state court ruling that struck down the state's provisions as unconstitutional.

Judges have restored voting rights to an estimated 55,000 North Carolinians on parole or probation for a felony, according to a lawyer for the people who challenged the law that has kept them from voting.

GOP state lawmakers, who were defending the law in court, plan to appeal Monday’s ruling to a higher court. But if the ruling is upheld on appeal, then people convicted of felonies in North Carolina will regain their right to vote once they leave prison.

“Everyone on felony probation, parole or post-supervision release can now register and vote, starting today,” the challengers’ lawyer, Stanton Jones, said in a text message Monday morning after the ruling came down.

Most U.S. states allow people with felony records to regain their voting rights at some point after leaving prison, according to the National Conference of State Legislators. Some have the same rules North Carolina had until Monday’s ruling, requiring people to first finish their probation or parole. But a larger number have the rules that the judges have now switched North Carolina to, with people regaining their rights as soon as they leave prison.

It’s the biggest expansion of voting rights in North Carolina since the 1960s, said Daryl Atkinson, co-director of Durham civil rights group Forward Justice and a lawyer for the challengers in this case.

“Our biggest quarrels in this state have been over what groups of people have a voice at the ballot box to be included in ‘We the People,’” Atkinson said at a press conference Monday, later adding: “Today, we enlarged the ‘we’ in ‘We the people’.”

The law’s challengers argued that felon disenfranchisement laws were explicitly created to stop Black people from voting in the years after the Civil War and coincided with a widespread campaign to accuse newly freed Black people of felonies — troubling trends, they said, which have continued into the current day.

Jones said in his opening arguments in the trial last week, The News & Observer reported, that while Black people make up 21% of North Carolina’s voting-age population, they are 42% of the people whose voting rights have been taken away because of this law — “which is no surprise because that’s exactly what it was designed to do,” he said.

Now, if Monday’s ruling survives on appeal, North Carolina will be the only state in the South to automatically restore voting rights to people after they leave prison.

The challengers who won the case had said that once people are out of prison, they’ve rejoined society and should have a say in how it’s run. Even if they’re on probation they still can pay taxes and send their kids to school — and thus should be able to vote on the people in charge of spending their taxes or running the schools, said Dennis Gaddy, who founded Community Success Initiative, a Raleigh group that helps former prison inmates rejoin society.

“They can’t advocate for themselves” without being able to vote, he said. “They can’t advocate for their communities. They can’t advocate for their families.”

 

In other words, the ruling from the NC judges are that there's no compelling reason to force felons who have served their time to keep them from being able to register to vote, and that doing so is a denial of the 14th Amendment. Republicans of course say they will have the ruling blocked awaiting appeal. 

Republicans want as few Americans to vote as possible.

What does that say about their ideas of "democracy"?

The Good Package, Con't

Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema will never allow the $3.5 Good Package™ to pass as is, and she's letting everyone know that she determines its fate.

Kyrsten Sinema still opposes her party's plans for a $3.5 trillion, party-line spending bill. And she’s not up for a negotiation about it.

As House Democratic leaders hold back Sinema’s own Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill in order to push the Arizona Democrat and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to support a multitrillion-dollar spending bill, Sinema is making it crystal clear that her mind can’t be changed. And that applies even as her own legislation becomes a bargaining chip in House Democrats’ internal discussions.

The $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill “is a historic win for our nation’s everyday families and employers and, like every proposal, should be considered on its own merits,” said Sinema spokesperson John LaBombard. “Proceedings in the U.S. House will have no impact on Kyrsten’s views about what is best for our country - including the fact that she will not support a budget reconciliation bill that costs $3.5 trillion.”

It’s the latest entrenched position from the first-term moderate, whose resistance to changing the Senate’s filibuster rules and to supporting a $3.5 trillion spending bill is enraging progressives. Sinema and Manchin both helped pass Democrats’ budget earlier this month, setting up that gargantuan spending bill, but both are resistant to a social spending package that ultimately meets its $3.5 trillion top line mark.

Sinema in particular specifically opposes that spending goal, which was devised by Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Senate Democrats need all 50 of their members, including Manchin and Sinema, to pass a filibuster-proof reconciliation spending bill.

On Sunday Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her members were still pursuing a bill that costs $3.5 trillion, but are hoping to finance it in part with tax enforcement and tax increases on the wealthy and corporations. Meanwhile, moderates in Pelosi's caucus are declining to back the Senate-passed budget unless Pelosi puts Sinema’s Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill up for a vote on the House floor.

 

Sinema isn't alone however...

In statement shortly after Sinema's, Manchin leaned on Pelosi and House leaders to act now on the $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill instead of waiting for the Senate to pass a massive spending bill.

"It would send a terrible message to the American people if this bipartisan bill is held hostage. I urge my colleagues in the House to move swiftly to get this once in a generation legislation to the President’s desk for his signature," Manchin said.

 

Pelosi knows damn well that passing the smaller bipartisan bill means Sinema and Manchin will 100% kill the entire Good Package completely, but if she doesn't pass it, the Good Package is done for, and Dems lose it all.

Again, this is entirely on Democratic leadership: Pelosi and Schumer need to deliver the votes.

That's the job description, folks.

StupidiNews!

• Democrat Kathy Hochul has succeeded NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo as his resignation became official at 12:01 AM, bcomin the state's first woman governor.
• Leaders of the G7 group of nations, including President Biden, will discuss an August 31st Taliban deadline for all Western troops to be out of Afghanistan.
• Vice President Kamala Harris's historic Asia trip continued to Singapore Tuesday where she accused China of "coercion" across the South China Sea area. 
• Polls in Canada show PM Justin Trudeau's government faces a tough snap election campaign this fall against Tory opposition as Liberals fight to keep power amid several Trudeau scandals.
• Chevrolet is recalling all of its electric Bolt auto models for a pair of battery defects that could end up costing the carmaker nearly $2 billion to fix.

Last Call For The Long Game

At least Democrats are finally admitting that after the disappointment of 2020's state elections, that winning back state legislatures are going to be next to impossible without major investment by the national party into state party efforts.

Now, Democrats are licking their wounds and looking to cobble together a new strategy for success in state legislative races after failing to flip a single chamber throughout the entire country last year. Those defeats are particularly stinging now as Republicans are left in control of redistricting for 187 House districts, while Democrats will have full control to delineate just 84.

Those defeats stand in stark contrast to the victories Democrats projected in states like Arizona, Minnesota, North Carolina and Texas. Adding insult to injury, Democrats also ceded both chambers of the New Hampshire legislature.

And with redistricting coming just ahead of the 2022 midterms, those losses have Democrats alarmed.

“I think it's devastating,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, which helps Democrats win state legislative races. “If we hold the House in 2022, it will be a structural miracle. Because Democrats failing to flip a single chamber and in fact losing two in 2020 is the kind of thing that will set Congress back decades.”

It is that alarm that is fueling Democrats’ scramble to achieve greater success in state legislative races.

Heather Williams, the executive director of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC), said the party is “in the process of solidifying our strategy” and “ready to do recruitment and find candidates for seats on condensed timelines,” noting that redistricting will delay the entry of candidates in some races.

“I think it's imperative that Democrats win back state legislatures across the country,” added Pennsylvania state Sen. Jay Costa, who serves as Democrats’ floor leader. “I can't tell you how many years we've been trying to do it. And we've come close, we take three steps forward, and then over two cycles we take six steps back.”

Democrats have been tantalizingly close in several chambers. The party last year was two seats away from flipping the Arizona state House and Minnesota Senate and nine seats away from flipping the Texas state House, to name a few. Democrats made no headway in Arizona or Texas and won only one seat in Minnesota.

Nearly a dozen Democrats who spoke to The Hill said that the top priority is adjusting their messaging strategy for state races.

Democrats have preached as gospel for years that the party succeeds both locally and nationally when focusing on kitchen table issues like health care, jobs and education.

However, the party is looking to take that one step further by vocalizing the connections between specific communities and those issues rather than have a blanket talking point on issues like expanding access to health care.

Democrats must “communicate what we want to do and what we're trying to do, and again, depending upon what part of the state you're talking about. … In Southeast Pennsylvania … there's a message along those lines,” Costa said. “In the southwestern part of the state, which is trending significantly more Republican, it's a different conversation.”

 

I don't think the problem is "messaging" as it is "having done something to crow about". Turns out that actually doing something great, like, I dunno, a major infrastructure bill that helps tens of millions?

Might put points on the board with voters in 2022, but Dems have to brag about it at every opportunity.

Will they listen?

Hell they still haven't passed either infrastructure bill. Can we start there?

Af-Gone-Istan, Con't

The Biden Administration is turning to the Pentagon's Civil Reserve Air Fleet program to get commercial jetliners into Kabul in order to airlift Americans and Afghan refugees out of Afghanistan.

President Biden said Sunday that the U.S. military is “executing a plan” to move stranded American citizens to the Kabul airport in greater numbers, including through an expansion of a safe zone around the facility and by creating conduits for people to access the compound “safely and effectively.”

“Our first priority in Kabul,” Biden said in remarks at the White House, “is getting American citizens out of the country as quickly and as safely as possible.”

The president would not say how the plan for “increased rational access to the airport” is being carried out or whether U.S. troops have expanded their perimeter outside the airport and further into Kabul, which could put them at heightened risk of attack from Taliban factions manning security checkpoints and Islamic State operatives who, U.S. officials warn, pose a serious threat.

In recent days, the Qatari ambassador to Afghanistan has escorted small groups of Americans into the airport, according to two people familiar with the effort who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation. American citizens have been instructed to meet at rally points in the city, and the ambassador then accompanies them to guarantee safe passage, these people said. Qatar has served as an intermediary between the United States and the Taliban at several stages of the American withdrawal, sponsoring peace talks and serving as the first point of refuge for many evacuees.

The operational shift comes as U.S. commanders gear up for what officials hope will be a dramatic acceleration of evacuations from Afghanistan in the coming days, enlisting domestic commercial airliners and a number of foreign allies to aid the effort.

Evacuations had slowed over the past couple days, as backlogs in way stations like Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar prevented planeloads of people from departing Kabul, grounding planned flights out and degrading humanitarian conditions at the already overcrowded airport.

The addition of 18 commercial airplanes — activated, the Pentagon announced Sunday, as part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet — is intended to address those bottlenecks. The jetliners, contracted from domestic airlines United, American, Atlas, Delta, Omni and Hawaiian, will not be flown into Kabul, but used instead to move those taken to places like Qatar on to other destinations in Europe, the Americas, Africa and the Persian Gulf. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said earlier in the weekend that 13 countries had pledged to temporarily host evacuees, while an additional 12 had agreed to serve as transit points.

Biden said Sunday that the mobilization represented a “first stage,” leaving the possibility that more flights could be added to the effort.

On Saturday, the U.S. military operated 14 evacuation flights that took about 3,900 people out of the country, while 35 other planes evacuated approximately the same number, according to White House and Pentagon officials. That’s up twofold from Friday — but still short of the 5,000 to 9,000 people per day that senior military officials have said they have the capability to evacuate themselves.

 

Biden's still wisely being intentionally cagey about operational security, as he should be, but it's excellent that we're bringing in more airliners to get more people out more quickly. It's a move that makes sense and will work, and hopefully these additional planes will be pressed into service in a matter of days, if not sooner.

We still have thousands of Americans in Afghanistan, and for now, the US is working to get them out. That's a good thing. When something like this goes bad, well, some of my earliest memories are of the news counting the hundreds of days that US hostages were held in Iran in 1980.

Regardless, evacuation numbers have increased dramatically over the weekend.

Earlier estimates said the upper limit on how many people could be evacuated per day was between 5,000 and 9,000. The fact that the US flew out ~10,400 over a 24-hour period is important. https://t.co/nqCqFIcHEe

— Steve Benen (@stevebenen) August 23, 2021

The takeaway here is that Biden is getting the job done, despite all the howling from the GOP and the media.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

We're now watching the total collapse of regional hospital systems in states like Texas, where hundreds are dying daily from delta and hundreds more are dying because there are no facilities to take care of emergent patients any longer.

Emergency room doctors in Southeast Texas say they are running out of hospital beds, and some patients are waiting hours, sometimes days to be admitted into a hospital.

“Are there patients dying because of this that might not have died? Absolutely, yes,” said Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council CEO, Darrell Pile. “I am very concerned about the fatalities that are about to happen.”

As of Friday afternoon, Pile says 482 patients were waiting for hospital beds in his 25-county region. He said 211 of those patients are COVID-19 positive.

An additional 120 patients are waiting for an ICU bed. Of those patients, 65 are COVID-19 positive.

“The poor nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists can’t see all the patients that are mounting in the lobby, and now we have patients waiting in parking lots and we have patients waiting in the back of ambulances in parking lots. It’s a gridlock at the emergency department level,” Pile told KPRC 2.

The SETRAC CEO says the Southeast Texas region is short about 2,000 nurses, which he says is the main reason behind the bed shortage.

“It’s a situation where a patient, after waiting hours, may get into an emergency department room with a curtain drawn and be assessed and be decided they need to be admitted, but there’s nowhere to go, and that’s where they stay for hours and hours and maybe days,” said Pile.

In some cases, he says patients are being flown out of state to places like Louisiana, Utah, Colorado, North Dakota and Minnesota, instead of going to the Texas Medical Center.

“We are used to being the place where patients fly to. They come here,” he said.

At Altus Baytown, a freestanding ER, Dr. Robert Velarde said they are facing something they have never seen before.

“For us, this is the worst surge since COVID has started,” Dr. Velarde told KPRC 2. “It’s hectic. It’s tiring. It’s stressful.”

Due to a lack of hospital beds, if patients need to be admitted into a hospital for more specialized care, he says the delay is overwhelming.

“We are trying to treat the patient who should be in the ICU in the emergency room. They are not getting the full supervision or maintenance they need,” he said.

Dr. Velarde says his ER staff has spent hours on the phone looking for hospitals that can accept his patients. In fact, they have even used Google to find hospitals across the country that may have open beds.

“If I want a COVID bed, I have to be calling like 50 to 60 hospitals a day just to find one,” said Dr. Velarde. “They even hired a person here just to come and make calls trying to find a bed for the patient.”

 

And governors in these states are either doing nothing, are prevented from doing anything by GOP legislatures, or both.  We're seeing triage measures at best. We need to be back in lockdown mode, but nobody will tolerate it. The violence would kill people too. Southern GOP states are out of resources and governors are doing things like "requesting more nurses" and turning libraries into field hospitals, instead of telling people to get the vaccine and otherwise stay home.

We're at the breaking point now.

By the way, the FDA is expected to announce that the Pfizer vaccine is getting full approval as early as today, which means more vaccine mandates are going to be coming. A new USA Today/Ipsos poll out Monday finds more than 70% of Americans support public mask mandates as 'a matter of health and safety" and more than 60% support vaccine mandates.

The problem, in the same poll, is that 20% of Americans say they will never get the vaccine, regardless of mandates. Some 70% of Americans say that employers, universities, airlines, restaurants, and other businesses should be able to refuse service to the unvaccinated.

That's the next big fight over the months ahead, and I fully expect the US Supreme Court to step in, maybe even before the end of the year.

We'll see where we go, but the next couple of months at least are going to be abysmal.

StupidiNews!

 StupidiNews returns!

I know it's been a while and my schedule working West Coast hours hasn't been too amenable to keeping up with what's effectively 4 AM Pacific time posts, but we're going to get back into the swing of things starting today

• Utility crews across Eastern PA, New York, and New England are working to restore power to more than 56,000 as Tropical Storm Henri came ashore in Rhode Island and Connecticut on Sunday.
• Civil rights leader Rev. Jesse Jackson and his wife Jacqueline are "doing well" after both were hospitalized for COVID-19 over the weekend.
• The US Supreme Court has temporarily blocked a lower court ruling that would have required President Joe Biden to reinstate the Trump-era Migrant Protection Protocols program.
• UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is asking President Biden to delay the exit of US troops from Afghanistan past next week's August 31 deadline.
• The US has now passed 200 million Americans who have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
  

Last Call For Af-Gone-Istan, Con't

Bloomberg News is reporting that in June, President Joe Biden assured NATO allies that the US would be able to stay in Kabul, to the point of London believing they would be able to keep their embassy there open.

President Joe Biden told key allies in June that he would maintain enough of a security presence in Afghanistan to ensure they could continue to operate in the capital following the main U.S. withdrawal, a vow made before the Taliban’s rapid final push across the country, according to a British diplomatic memo seen by Bloomberg.

Biden promised U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and other leaders at the Group of Seven summit in Cornwall, England, that “critical U.S. enablers” would remain in place to keep Kabul safe following the drawdown of NATO forces, the note said. British officials determined the U.S. would provide enough personnel to ensure that the U.K. embassy in Kabul could continue operating.

But the withdrawal of U.S. forces saw the Afghan government collapse as Taliban fighters raced across the country seizing provincial capitals, culminating in scenes of chaos at Kabul’s airport this week as Western governments tried to pull out their diplomats. The British embassy has since been evacuated, Johnson’s office said, and the U.S. embassy is now shuttered.

The discussions between G7 leaders highlight how Western governments were caught off guard by the speed of the Taliban advance. Foreign ministers in both the U.K. and Germany have faced calls to quit over their initially sluggish efforts to extract officials on the ground, other nationals and the Afghans who worked with them.

Pressure is also growing on Biden to extend his Aug. 31 deadline to pull out troops from the country in order to get as many people as possible safely out of the country. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said Friday that some of the alliance’s members want to see the U.S. mission extended, a position pushed by many Democrats and Republicans in the U.S. Congress.

The British document also showed that the U.S. was privately briefing allies that they should be prepared for a Taliban offensive before any settlement that might have allowed former President Ashraf Ghani to remain in power. U.S. diplomats said that the Taliban would “test the Afghan government militarily” before they started taking seriously peace talks that were taking place in Doha, the note said.

White House officials didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

 

This isn't UK PM Boris Johnson stabbing Biden in the back, this is stabbing him in the front, in broad daylight, on global television and spending a good 30 minutes on the slo-mo replays. Somebody at Downing Street wants all of this to fall on Biden's shoulders, and for Britain to do this to the US shows just how furious they are over there.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

At least one state university, UVA, is taking vaccine requirements seriously for COVID: no vaccine, no college for over 200 students sent packing for refusing the jab.

The University of Virginia disenrolled 238 students ahead of its fall semester for noncompliance with the school’s COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

Of that number, 49 were enrolled in fall courses — meaning that “a good number” of the remaining students “may not have been planning to return to the University this fall at all,” U.Va. spokesperson Brian Coy said in an email to The Virginian-Pilot.

The students were disenrolled after “receiving multiple reminders via email, text, phone calls, calls to parents that they were out of compliance and had until yesterday to update their status,” Coy said.

Disenrolled students can reenroll if they comply with U.Va.’s vaccine requirement or file an exemption by Aug. 25. They can also return during the spring semester, provided they are vaccinated or exempt by then.

Students had until Wednesday to either show proof of vaccination or file an exemption.

U.Va. granted 335 permanent vaccine waivers for students with religious or medical exemptions. The university also granted 184 temporary vaccine waivers for students who couldn’t get vaccinated due to their summer living situation but intend to get a vaccine once on campus.

Exempt students are required to take a weekly COVID-19 test and wear a mask in both indoor and outdoor common spaces.

The university is one of many across the state requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Several local universities — such as William & Mary, Old Dominion University, Norfolk State University and Christopher Newport University — are also requiring proof of vaccination.

About 96.6 percent of U.Va. students have been vaccinated against COVID-19, according to a news release.

 

So there are unvaccinated students, who have filed exemptions, and are facing weekly testing and masks. The school is accommodating them, for sure. The ones who didn't play ball at all however are gone.

Expect to see a lot more of this in the weeks and months ahead, both from universities and businesses, and I expect some sort of Supreme Court ruling (or punt) as soon as the October 1 term starts, if not an emergency ruling sooner. One way or another, mask mandates are going to be resolved nationally soon.

Sunday Long Read: The Dresden White Diamond Affair

Our Sunday Long Read is another true crime story, this time from GQ's Joshua Hammer, about the brazen billion-dollar theft of Germany's most famous diamond in November 2019 and the Lebanese crime family thought to be behind a decade of heists in Berlin.

 

Dirk Syndram stared out the car window from the passenger seat as the blackened streets of Dresden, Germany, zipped by. As a museum director, Syndram doesn't get many phone calls in the middle of the night; he isn't often roused from his bed and driven into work in the predawn darkness. That sort of thing can only mean the worst has happened.

As his car slowed to a stop outside the Residenzschloss—the city's iconic Baroque palace—Syndram could see that the cops had the whole area sealed off. It was now a little before six o'clock on the morning of November 25, 2019, and from the street that ran past the palace, a keen observer might have noticed the damage in a nook on the ground floor. A section of an iron gate had been pried apart. Behind it, where there had once been a window, there was now a gaping hole.

Police wouldn't allow him through to survey the damage, but Syndram didn't need to go inside to understand what had happened. He knew—better than anybody—what the thieves had been after. The window led to the so-called Green Vault, a glittering repository of 3,000 of the most precious royal treasures in Europe: gemstone-studded sculptures, ornate ivory cabinets, miniature dioramas, massive diamonds, and hundreds of other rare objects of enormous cultural significance—much of the trove commissioned or acquired by the early-18th-century monarch Augustus II, nicknamed Augustus the Strong, who socked it all away in his sprawling Residenzschloss, or Royal Palace, on the Elbe River.

Syndram, who'd been the Green Vault's director since 1993, was horrified and mystified: The museum, Syndram would later tell a reporter, had in recent years conducted tests of its security system and determined that all was working perfectly. What could have possibly gone wrong?

When news of the heist hit the press, the robbery was described as one of the most costly art heists in history. Reports valued the looted treasure at as much as $1.2 billion. That figure was debatable, but the scale of the loss was staggering, and Syndram knew a detail that made the problem much, much worse: None of the art was insured. The premiums on a collection that valuable would be too taxing for the museum to handle.

Eventually authorities let Syndram inside to inspect the crime scene. He walked through vaulted and mirrored antechambers into the Hall of Precious Objects, where he could see the thieves' point of entry. Much of the room was intact, the idiosyncratic treasures—gilded ostrich eggs, nautiluses and sea snails set in silver, crystal bowls—appeared untouched. Aside from the missing window, the only sign of the intruders was on the floor, where Syndram noticed an exquisite jewelry box that had been knocked off a display table. It remained undamaged.

Syndram passed through another room and into the burglars' ultimate destination: the Chamber of Jewels. In a far corner, a display case had been hacked to pieces, the safety glass reduced to thousands of tiny shards. Syndram could see that the thieves had made off with a slew of very particular treasures: a diamond-laden breast star of the Polish Order of the White Eagle; a sword hilt containing nine large and 770 smaller diamonds; an epaulet adorned with the Dresden White Diamond, a 49-carat cushion-cut stone of unusual radiance and purity believed to have been unearthed from the fabled Golconda mines of India. Gone as well were many diamond-studded buttons and shoe buckles worn by Augustus the Strong at wild-boar hunts and weddings.

Syndram stared at the shattered showcase. He felt as if someone had injured a person he loved. He had been the individual responsible for returning the collection to the Green Vault, after decades of displacement and near destruction during World War II and its convulsive aftermath. “The theft was brutal, shameless,” the director would later say. It was also astonishingly fast. Apparently aware that they had a narrow window of time between triggering the alarm and the arrival of the police, the thieves had used less than five minutes to get in and out of the museum. They seemed to know exactly what they had come for. Or did they? Syndram couldn't decide for sure.

 

This is another one of those stories that would make an excellent movie, but it's not fiction. The crime was bold and brazen, but there's always the problem of finding a buyer for an internationally famous piece of art or having to break it up into pieces in order to sell it. The police need to find the crooks before that happens, and this race is a good one.

The Vax Of Life, Kentucky Carnage Edition

Kentucky's Supreme Court ruled unanimously today against Gov. Andy Beshear, finding that he has no legal challenge to the laws that the KY legislature passed earlier this year stripping him of nearly all emergency powers, and that Republican lawmakers can now end the state's school mask mandate immediately.

In a momentous legal defeat for Gov. Andy Beshear, the Kentucky Supreme Court in a rare Saturday decision ruled on the Democratic governor’s challenge of Republican-backed laws that limit his authority to enact emergency orders to help control the coronavirus pandemic.

In a 34-page order, the state’s highest court unanimously said Franklin Circuit Court abused its discretion in blocking the new laws from taking effect and sent the case back to the lower court to dissolve the injunction.

The challenged legislation was lawfully passed and the governor’s complaint “does not present a substantial legal question that would necessitate staying the effectiveness of the legislation,” the seven-member court ruled.

The Supreme Court had heard nearly two hours of arguments in the case on June 11, a day before Beshear repealed many of his emergency regulations.

The most prominent he has in place now is his Aug. 10 executive order requiring almost all teachers, staff and students in K-12 schools, child care and pre-kindergarten programs across Kentucky to wear a mask indoors. It applies for 30 days and leaves open the indefinite possibility for renewal. A U.S. district judge’s ruling Thursday temporarily blocked that order. Beshear has asked that it be dissolved.

The state Board of Education on Aug. 12 implemented its own emergency regulations requiring a mask mandate for students for most of this school year, and the Department for Public Health did the same for child care facilities. A legislative panel has since found those regulations deficient, but Beshear overrode that decision. One of the new laws in question would eliminate Beshear’s ability to override such decisions.

Saturday’s Supreme Court ruling came as the Delta variant of COVID-19 is raging across the state.

The state Supreme Court last year unanimously ruled that Beshear’s orders were legal, but that was before the legislature passed laws earlier this year restricting the governor’s powers.

They were Senate Bill 1, which limits Beshear’s ability to issue orders during a state of emergency to 30 days unless extended by the General Assembly; House Bill 1, which allows businesses, schools, nonprofits and churches to stay open if they meet COVID-19 guidelines set by either the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or Kentucky’s executive branch, whichever is least restrictive; and Senate Bill 2, a companion bill to SB 1 to give the legislature more power over administrative regulations issued during an emergency.

So, unless the CDC issues masking guidelines in schools, Kentucky schools will be maskless. Individual school districts have already been stripped of the power to enforce mask rules and now so has Beshear's office. Religious schools have already been exempted from mask mandates, now all schools will be.

I expect that with tens of thousands of kids sick across the state this fall and winter, the state legislature may let Beshear do something. Sadly, I expect the only thing they will do is consider impeachment again.

Thousands of Kentuckians are going to die from a preventable disease in the next several months.

You can thank Kentucky Republicans for that.

Retribution Execution, Con't

All Republicans want to be The Former Guy™ and to get away with as much criminality, grifting, and proto-fascist overlording as possible, especially in states they are trying to steal from the Democrats, states like Minnesota.

 

Minnesota Republican leaders forced Jennifer Carnahan out as head of the state party on Thursday, turning a page on a scandal that threatened to consume GOP politics ahead of a pivotal election year.

Carnahan leaves as chair of the party amid allegations that she created a toxic workplace environment, one that blurred personal and professional lines, ignored concerns about sexual harassment and retaliated against employees who didn't fall in line.

The party's 15-member executive board voted 8-7 to give Carnahan a severance of three months salary, roughly $38,000, to leave her role. Carnahan, who attended the meeting virtually, was the deciding vote to give herself severance on the way out. The board also approved investigations into the party's finances and human resources protocols.

"It hs been the honor of a lifetime to serve as chairwoman for the Republican Party of Minnesota," Carnahan said in a statement after the vote. "However, I signed up for this party to help us elect Republicans and I want to ensure that we can continue to do that."

The drumbeat for Carnahan to step down began a week ago over her close relationship with GOP donor Anton "Tony" Lazzaro, who was arrested on federal sex-trafficking charges. But allegations against her quickly expanded, prompting nearly 20 legislators and three Republican gubernatorial candidates to call for investigations and her immediate resignation.

Carnahan initially resisted the calls to resign, saying the allegations were part of a "coup" by her detractors. On Thursday, she continued to push back on the claims, saying she had no knowledge of sexual harassment accusations and a "mob mentality came out in this way to defame, tarnish and attempt to ruin my personal and professional reputation."

The stream of allegations against Carnahan intensified by Wednesday, after multiple women detailed in social media posts experiences where they said they were sexually harassed or spoken to inappropriately by staff in the party.

The same day, four former executive directors of the party released a statement saying Carnahan "ruled by grudges, retaliation, and intimidation" in the party, aiding candidates she preferred and lashing out against those who spoke out against her.

Those staffers — Becky Alery, Andy Aplikowski, Christine Snell and Kevin Poindexter — said they were able to speak out after the party's Executive Board voided nondisclosure agreements that Carnahan allegedly used to silence staff.

Carnahan's ouster comes a year ahead of the pivotal 2022 midterm election, in which the governor's office, all 201 legislative seats and Minnesota's eight congressional seats are on the ballot. Republicans are trying to end a 15-year losing streak in statewide races, but campaign finance reports show the party has a major financial disadvantage to the state DFL Party.

It also abruptly halts the rapid rise of Carnahan, a small-business owner who attended her first-ever GOP caucus meeting in 2016 and ran for a Minneapolis state Senate seat that fall. By 2017, she unexpectedly vaulted to the helm of the state party, the first person of color to lead the party's grassroots activists.

 

The rotten, Trump-like behavior is all there: staff intimidation, up to and including non-disclosure agreements, taking public money for their own, and blaming a "coup" when caught. The problem was never Trump, the problem was that the GOP made acting like Trump acceptable. Jennifer Carnahan was part of that result, a monster elevated to state party chair precisely because she was a vicious Trump acolyte in a Trump party.

 

I'll Take Scandals For $2,000, Mike

Jeopardy! executive producer (helpful for naming yourself host, that is) Mike Richards is stepping down as the late Alex Trebek's replacement after people repeatedly brought up the point that Richards has a long history of antisemitism and sexism.

 

Mike Richards is out as “Jeopardy!” host, just nine days after he was tapped to succeed the legendary Alex Trebek as the face of the beloved quiz show.

Richards, who is also executive producer of “Jeopardy!,” saw his hold on the job undone with astonishing speed after unflattering and downright ugly details surfaced about his past conduct and statements he made on an eight-year-old podcast series. He will remain the show’s executive producer and episodes that Richards shot on Thursday in his first and only day as “Jeopardy!” permanent host will run as scheduled to start off the new season on Sept. 13.

On Friday, Sony Pictures TV confirmed that Richards had agreed to step aside as host. In a statement, Richards said the backlash had created “too much of a distraction for our fans and not the right move for the show.”

“Jeopardy!” has no choice but to run the Richards-hosted episodes taped Thursday because of the need for contuinity among contestants, given that the winner of each episode continues to compete on the following episode.

Richards’ hasty exit as host came a day after the Anti-Defamation League called for an investigation after a report surfaced in The Ringer that Richards made disparaging remarks about Jews, women and other groups in episodes of the comedy podcast “The Randumb Show” recorded in 2013 and 2014.

In the podcast, Richards had asked his female assistant and his female co-host whether they had ever taken nude photos, or in his words, “booby pictures.” In another episode, he called his co-host a “booth ho.”

In the end, Sony concluded that Richards’ image was too battered for him to take the helm of one of television’s most prestigious and popular brands. The irony is that the studio moved in his favor because he was seen as a neutral personality rather than an established name that might overshadow the show and its famously rapid fire, answers-in-the-form-of-a-question format.

“We support Mike’s decision to step down as host,” Sony Pictures TV said. “We were surprised this week to learn of Mike’s 2013/2014 podcast and the offensive language he used in the past. We have spoken with him about our concerns and our expectations moving forward.”

But the studio also voiced support for him remaining in his role as executive producer. A new round of guest hosts will be tapped to tape episodes to launch the show’s 38th year in syndication next month. Richards began his first day of taping as permanent host on Aug. 19, which turned out to be his last day in the role.

“Mike has been with us for the last two years and has led the ‘Jeopardy!’ team through the most challenging time the show has ever experienced. It is our hope that as EP he will continue to do so with professionalism and respect,” Sony said.

 

The fact that Richards gets to remain on as executive producer leaves a very sour taste in my mouth, and guest hosts or not, I have little to no interest in watching the show anymore knowing that Richards is still going to be a jackass of a boss with an axe to grind directly on the skull of whomever gets the permanent job.

 

Get rid of Richards, then we'll talk, Sony.

 

 

 

Landlording Over It All

The good news: President Biden's eviction moratorium is keeping families in rental homes and apartments and driving out bad landlords.

The bad news: the bad landlords are being replaced by horrific, corporate monstrosities that are creating rent monopolies across the country and jacking up rent by double-digit percentages per year.

 

Some owners are taking advantage of a red-hot housing market to sell their units to deep-pocketed investors willing to wait out the moratorium or to families who plan to live in them. Buyers are increasingly out-of-town investors or equity funds, whom critics fear will renovate the properties and market them at much higher prices.

“A lot of landlords are disgusted. They are selling at losses. They are getting out period,” Reid said of the dozens of investors he talks with.

Even those sticking with the property business say the moratorium has forced them to change their operations.

Some are leaving apartments vacant for months at a time, either because they lack the money to renovate or fear being stuck with nonpaying tenants. Some aren’t buying any new properties as long as the moratorium is in place; others will only buy in wealthier neighborhoods.

Still others are bolstering their screening process and giving extra scrutiny to someone who was unemployed for long stretches during the pandemic or saddled their previous landlord with months of back rent.

“If somebody stiffed their previous landlord out of 12, 15 or 18 months rent, I don’t want to rent to them,” Reid said.

This could result in fewer places to live for low-income tenants facing eviction when the moratorium lifts.

“It makes it worse for everyone. It’s worse for tenants, in particular, because we are going to lose affordable housing,” said Stacey Johnson-Cosby, who with her husband owns 21 units in the Kansas City, Missouri, area.

“The investors are going to come. They are going buy the property, put money into it, renovate it and rent it at a higher amount.”

Rick Martin anguished over just that before selling two of his five buildings in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. Before that the 62-year-old left most of them vacant due to the moratorium, depriving him of thousands of dollars in rent.

“The minute they enacted the moratorium, that trigged my decision to sell the properties,” Martin said. “I did not want someone moving in whom I could never get rid of if they didn’t pay rent. That would make the financial situation worse.”

Martin said he was torn about the decision to sell to investors. One has turned a building into condos. Another has already doubled the rent on a three-family building.

“Honestly it’s a very difficult decision,” he said. “I want the small property owners to flourish and grow. But because of this moratorium, we are having everything cut out from beneath us.”

 

There are many reasons why Republicans are trying to prolong the COVID-19 pandemic nationwide, but one of the biggest is driving out small landlords and sick renters and property owners, so that real estate can be bought for bargain prices by those who have to sell, to have move out, or pass away. 

More corporations aren equity firms are going to move in to your neighborhood, and they are going to cause their own massive real estate bubble, loot the place, then head for the exits before the next crash.

Then 10-15 years down the road they'll do it all over again.

Last Call For The Good Package, Con't

Both Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are "advising" House moderates to do the dirty work of stabbing Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the back on the infrastructure bill, so that the two senators don't have to take the fall for killing The Good Package™.

Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) are privately advising the nine House centrist lawmakers trying to force Speaker Nancy Pelosi to hold a quick vote on the Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure deal, lawmakers and aides tell Axios.

Why it matters: The two moderates who've stirred the biggest frustrations and held the most sway in their party over the infrastructure negotiations are helping allies in the House to stake out — and defend — their centrist position. They're offering encouragement and advice on how to negotiate with the White House and congressional leadership. 

Their behind-the-scenes support also indicates the degree to which Manchin and Sinema have prioritized getting the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure deal to final passage and in front of Biden for his signature.

The big picture: The conversations are bolstering House centrists' resolve. Since publicly demanding last Friday that Pelosi first bring the infrastructure bill to the floor before considering a larger package through a $3.5 trillion budget plan, the nine lawmakers have been subject to a combination of private scorn and public pressure. Pelosi referred to their tactics as “amateur hour” in a leadership call earlier this week, Politico reports. 

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement endorsing Pelosi’s approach, expressing “hope that every Democratic member supports this effort to advance these important legislative actions.” Pelosi quoted from that statement in a “Dear Colleague” letter she sent to reiterate her position. 

Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, and Louisa Terrell, the head of legislative affairs, Shuwanza Goff, the House liaison, as well as Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, have been contacting lawmakers, urging them to vote for the rule.
So far, the nine lawmakers are withstanding pressure and remain committed to their strategy.

Between the lines: Both Manchin and Sinema have longstanding relationships with some of the centrist lawmakers including members of the "Problem Solvers" who worked together on COVID-19 relief bills in 2020.

Go deeper: The nonpartisan group "No Labels" is launching a six-figure ad by on national cable to give some air cover to the nine lawmakers."This unbreakable nine is showing America that we can still do amazing things," says the ad's narrator.

 

The poor bastards don't even hear the train coming. 

 

Killing The Good Package™ is the entire point, so that furious House progressives then turn around and murder the bipartisan bill, Democrats take 100% of the blame for turning a deal in hand into a flaming dumpster fire, and Democrats lose 60+ seats in the House next year and Pelosi retires.  There are plenty of forces in Washington that want to make this happen, and not all of them are Republicans.

Nothing good is going to come from this.

Don't Make Me Turn This Airplane Around, Kids

The FAA is getting extremely serious about levying civil fines against nasty, violent airline passengers in 2021, to the tune of a cool million dollars total, more than $10,000 per incident, and Democrats in Congress and airline unions want even harsher penalties.

The Federal Aviation Administration's announcement Thursday of $531,545 in fines against 34 passengers accused of being unruly on board is the single largest announcement of federal fines since the start of a nationwide crackdown earlier this year, bringing this year's total to more than $1 million. 

Of the incidents detailed by federal investigators for the first time, nearly two-thirds involve passengers accused of violating the federal transportation-wide mask mandate, which was just extended by the Transportation Security Administration to remain in place through January 18. 

Federal documents show that nine of the 34 incidents involve a passenger accused of touching or hitting another person on the plane, including crew members. Eight passengers are accused of illegally drinking alcohol they brought on board the plane. Half of the incidents involve flights to or from vacation destinations in Florida. 

With this announcement, the FAA has now proposed fines against nearly 80 passengers after receiving nearly 3,900 reports of incidents. The FAA said on Tuesday that based on the reports, it has opened 682 investigations into possible violations of federal laws. 

House Transportation Chairman Peter DeFazio told CNN this week that he would like to see punishment that's even harsher than fines, with those accused of in-flight violence facing prison time. 

"The first time we take one of these jerks who is assaulting flight attendants or attempting to take an aircraft down -- and they go away for a few years and they get a massive fine-- I think that will send a message," the Oregon Democrat said. 

But the FAA points out it does not have the authority to file criminal charges. Instead, it proposes civil fines that the accused violators may pay or dispute. 

The largest flight attendant union, the Association of Flight Attendants, has also called for more prosecutions. 

"If you interfere with a crew member's duties and put the rest of the plane in jeopardy, or assault the crew member, you're facing $35,000 in fines for each incident and up to 20 years in prison," association President Sara Nelson told CNN. "People need to understand there are severe consequences here."

 

The biggest fine so far has been $45,000, but these incidents happen weekly. I have to agree with Rep. DeFazio and the union: the first time one of these assholes ends up facing a decade in federal prison or so, the number of incidents will drop like a rock.

Make it happen, guys.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

Two for one in today's edition of recent COVID-19 news, first, President Biden announced on Wednesday that nursing homes and other elder care facilities that cannot prove employees are vaccinated will lose Medicare/Medicaid eligibility, along with other policies that will be taking effect at the federal level.

Biden said he is directing the Department of Health and Human Services to draw up new regulations making employee vaccination a condition for nursing homes to participate in Medicare and Medicaid. The decision on nursing home staff represents a significant escalation in Biden's campaign to get Americans vaccinated and the tools he is willing to use, marking the first time he has threatened to withhold federal funds in order to get people vaccinated. 

"Now, if you visit, live or work at a nursing home, you should not be at a high risk of contracting Covid from unvaccinated employees. While I'm mindful that my authority at the federal government is limited, I'm going to continue to look for ways to keep people safe and increase vaccination rates," the President said during a speech at the White House. 

Additionally, the President announced that he is directing Education Secretary Miguel Cardona to use "all of his oversight authorities and legal action, if appropriate, against governors who are trying to block and intimidate local school officials and educators" who want children to wear masks in the classroom. 

The President indicated that American Rescue Plan funds can be used to pay educators who have their paycheck cut by local and state governments if their schools implement mask mandates. 

The new actions announced by the President Wednesday afternoon come the same day the Biden administration said it would roll out a plan to provide booster shots to American adults beginning this fall.

 

Meanwhile in Florida, the state's largest school district, Miami-Dade County, is defying GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's order against mask mandates and will order schools to enforce them for all students and staff.

The school board in Miami-Dade County voted to approve a face mask mandate that will be in place when the new school year begins next week.

The board voted 7-1 in a meeting Wednesday, creating a similar policy to the one in Broward County designed to protect students and faculty against COVID-19.

The policy allows for a medical exemption but defies Gov. Ron DeSantis’ order against mask mandates. It is DeSantis’ position, and that of the state board of education, that parents should have the choice whether their children wear masks at school.

Lubby Navarro was the only Miami-Dade school board member to vote against the mandate. Board member Christi Fraga was not present.

Public school starts Monday in the largest school district in Florida.

 

This effectively means all of Florida's largest school systems have now called DeSantis's bluff on cutting education funding. We'll see if he follows through.

 

Last Call For Af-Gone-Istan, Con't

President Biden now admits that the "chaos" in Kabul was unavoidable as the US pulled out, and always would have been part of the result.

In an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, and the president's first since the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban, President Joe Biden stood firm in his defense of the United States' withdrawal, but asserted for the first time that he believes the chaos was unavoidable.

"So you don't think this could have been handled -- this exit could have been handled better in any way, no mistakes?" Stephanopoulos asked Biden.

"No, I don't think it could have been handled in a way that, we're gonna go back in hindsight and look -- but the idea that somehow, there's a way to have gotten out without chaos ensuing, I don't know how that happens. I don't know how that happened," Biden replied.

"So for you, that was always priced into the decision?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"Yes," Biden replied, but then amended his answer.

"Now exactly what happened, I've not priced in," he said. "But I knew that they're going to have an enormous -- Look, one of the things we didn't know is what the Taliban would do in terms of trying to keep people from getting out. What they would do. What are they doing now? They're cooperating, letting American citizens get out, American personnel get out, embassies get out, et cetera, but they're having -- we're having some more difficulty having those who helped us when we were in there."

Biden's decision to withdraw has led to scenes of pandemonium in Afghanistan, with as many as 11,000 Americans and tens of thousands of endangered Afghans scrambling to evacuate the country. Scenes of civilians swamping planes on the runway at the Kabul airport, desperate for escape, have triggered bipartisan criticism that the Biden administration handled the hasty exit poorly.

Biden grew defensive when Stephanopoulos referred to the scenes of distress.

"We've all seen the pictures. We've seen those hundreds of people packed in a C-17. We've seen Afghans falling --"

"That was four days ago, five days ago!" Biden interjected.

"What did you think when you first saw those pictures?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"What I thought was, we have to gain control of this. We have to move this more quickly. We have to move in a way in which we can take control of that airport. And we did," Biden said.

The U.S. said late Tuesday it has successfully evacuated 3,200 people from Afghanistan, including all U.S. Embassy personnel, except for a core group of diplomats at the Kabul airport. Officials have said they hope to ramp up to being able to evacuate 9,000 people each day.

But the U.S. government is not currently providing American citizens in Afghanistan with safe transport to the airport, and it remains unclear how many will be able to safely reach the airport, as Taliban checkpoints continue to harden.

So the continued success of the Biden administration's Kabul airlift depends on a lot of factors. Republicans of course want to see the operation fail, because they believe it will help them in the midterms.

Pay very close attention who is publicly hoping for a disaster to capitalize off of.

 

The Vax Of Life, Kentucky Edition

As the court battles over mask mandates and emergency powers continues here in Kentucky, with local Republicans trying to slaughter as many Kentuckians as possible to blame Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear, our state's hospitals are now starting to run out of room.

Issuing yet another plea for Kentuckians to get vaccinated against COVID-19 as hospitals fill with unvaccinated patients around the state, Gov. Andy Beshear on Tuesday said the state is nearing a tipping point.

“The Delta variant continues to burn through our population here in Kentucky,” the governor said at the state Capitol, adding that the state is seeing the “most rapid rise in cases that we have seen to date. We’re at an alarming point, and we’re rapidly approaching critical.”

Hospitals across the state continue to fill with largely unvaccinated coronavirus patients. Some, including in western Kentucky, are nearing or have hit capacity, Beshear said, adding that the Bowling Green Medical Center is reporting a full intensive care unit; the coronavirus patient influx at Jennie Stuart Health Center in Hopkinsville has grown by roughly 500% over the last two weeks; and Baptist Health hospitals in Paducah and Madisonville are nearing capacity.

As the virus rages and further burdens the state’s health care systems, Beshear said he’s not considering “any type of shutdown or capacity restrictions,” but reinstituting a statewide mask mandate is “under active consideration.”

The state is on track to exceed its mid-December record of 1,817 people hospitalized with coronavirus later this week. “By the end of the week, we expect to have more Kentuckians in the hospital battling covid than at any point in this pandemic,” Beshear said.

On Monday, 1,528 had been admitted to health care systems across the state — an increase of more than 100 over the weekend. Intensive care units are also nearing record capacity. At most during the winter surge, 460 people filled Kentucky’s ICUs. On Monday, that number was up to 429.

“There’s no sign it’s abating,” Kentucky Public Health Commissioner Steven Stack said, adding that a record 17 children or teenagers under age 18 are currently hospitalized with coronavirus in Kentucky. The incidence rate in younger Kentuckians has exploded by more than 400% over the last month, from 133 on July 16 to 548 on August 16. “What we’re finding across the state is this version of [COVID-19] is hitting people harder, they are getting sicker, and they are younger,” Stack said.

Many hospitals are taking steps they didn’t have to take last year, when vaccines weren’t yet available and the virus hit its peak. Over the weekend at St. Claire Healthcare in Morehead, hospital staff needed to “make room” for a continued influx of coronavirus patients, so they repurposed a post-anesthesia care unit into a COVID-19 ICU surge unit — a step the hospital did not have to take in the winter.

Increasingly in the coming weeks, hospitals will be forced to retrofit spaces and resources to accommodate a projected influx of patients. “The health care capacity is going to get really difficult here in the weeks ahead,” Stack said. “This will cascade and it will get worse.”

 

Kentucky, like Louisiana, is a southern state with a Democratic governor, and like Louisiana, Kentucky's biggest problem is a GOP legislature fighting tooth and nail for the "right" to not wear masks and not get vaccinated, and ending up in the hospital, lungs drowning in fluid.

Beshear is already asking the Biden administration for help, but only 54% of Kentuckians have had even one shot, and that number isn't expected to get much better. In the rural west and Appalachian east, these figures are below 30%, and we're seeing delta crush county after county here.

Beshear needs to issue a mask mandate. Biden needs to issue a vaccine mandate and a mask mandate. People are dying, and the deaths are preventable.