The Long (COVID) War, Con't

Colorado's health department has released devastating estimates of the occurrence of long COVID in the state, and it's affecting as much as 10-11% of the population.

 

State officials have released their first estimate of how many people in Colorado have been hit by long COVID-19. The figure is staggering: Data suggest that between 230,000 and 650,000 Coloradans may have been affected.

With a state population of nearly 6 million, the data suggest as many as one in 10 Coloradans have experienced long COVID, according to the report from The Office of Saving People Money on Healthcare in the Lt. Governor's Office. And many of them have struggled to find treatments and answers about what can be a life-altering illness.

People with post-COVID conditions can have a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, brain fog and headaches, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those may be prolonged, lasting weeks, months, or even years after infection.

Some patients described their challenges in a January segment on CPR’s Colorado Matters.

“I think that's what's so unclear about long COVID and potentially concerning about those numbers is that we certainly know some people recover,” but most haven’t, said Dr. Sarah Jolley, a researcher with CU Anshutz. Jolley is also the medical director of the UCHealth Post-COVID Clinic, one site of a national study looking at recovery after COVID.

Jolley said only 30 to 40 percent of long COVID patients have returned to their individual health baseline so far, based on what she’s observed and seen in research.

“There are a number of folks where symptoms persist much longer and so it's hard to estimate what proportion of that 600,000 will have longer-term symptoms versus shorter-term long COVID symptoms,” she said. “I would say the minority of individuals that we've seen have had complete recovery.”

The implications of that are enormous, Jolley said, both in terms of so-called long-haulers’ quality of life as well as Colorado’s workforce, education, health care and other systems.

Jolley said the best protection and prevention against long COVID is getting fully vaccinated, including the latest booster. “We know that vaccination lessens the risk of long COVID, lessens the severity of initial disease,” she said, noting the lagging number of people getting the omicron booster in Colorado. Currently, only about a quarter of eligible people in the state have received the omicron booster, according to the state’s vaccine dashboard, far below the uptake for the initial series of vaccines.

 

When the best case scenario is "two percent of the population is suffering from debilitating, long-term physical and mental symptoms preventing them from being able to function" then again, we're nowhere near ready to deal with the implications. We're talking millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans disabled by COVID in the months and years ahead.

 

We're not going to have the resources to deal with that, let alone the second and third-order effects on the economy, society, and health systems.  

This is going to be the public health challenge of our generation and we've barely even started to acknowledge it.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Another pair of mass shootings over the weekend in Gunmerica, one of them in Louisville, still reeling from another mass shooting earlier last week.

 

At least two people were killed in a shooting at a park in Louisville, Kentucky, over the weekend, less than a week after a mass shooting at a bank in the city left five people dead.

Two people died and four others were injured after shots were fired into a crowd at Chickasaw Park in Louisville on Saturday. Police responded to reports of the shooting around 9 p.m., and two victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

Louisville Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said at a press conference on Saturday night that while there were hundreds of people in the park at the time of the attack, police had no witnesses to the shooting. Humphrey also said it was unclear who opened fire.

“I want to speak directly to whoever the shooter is,” Humphrey said. “Turn yourself in. The best thing for you to do is to turn yourself in. We know that this will not end well. The best-case scenario is for you to turn yourself in and stop this.”

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg (D) also reflected on the gun violence in the city over the past week, saying it had been “an unspeakable week of tragedy.”

“On Monday, we lost five of our fellow citizens to a horrific act of workplace gun violence,” Greenberg said. “And now, five days later, we’re at another scene of a reckless act of gun violence.”

 

Meanwhile, another mass shooting happened last night in Alabama.

A celebration turned violent in downtown Dadeville Saturday night as a shooting left four dead and more than 20 people injured according to investigators on scene.

Witnesses tell WRBL the gathering was a Sweet-16 Birthday celebration at Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio, and the shooting happened around 10:30 Saturday night. We are told the majority of those injured are teenagers. That information has not been confirmed by law enforcement. We do not know if a person(s) of interest or suspect(s) is in custody.

Sources tell WRBL multiple law enforcement agencies are working feverishly in multiple jurisdictions on the investigation. Law enforcement’s limited disclosure of information regarding the mass shooting, the victims, and the suspect(s) has left some members of the community feeling increasingly frustrated. WRBL is told ALEA is leading the investigation, not local law enforcement. ALEA releases the following statement Sunday morning around 8:15:

At approximately 11:45 p.m. Saturday, April 15, Special Agents with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s (ALEA) State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) launched a death investigation at the request of the Dadeville Police Chief. The investigation is a result of a shooting which occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. near the 200 Block of Broadnax Street in Dadeville, located in Tallapoosa County. Currently, there have been four confirmed fatalities and multiple injuries. The following agencies responded to the scene and are currently assisting with the investigation: The Dadeville Police Department, Tallapoosa County Sheriff’s Office, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the 5 Circuit District Attorney’s Office. Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.

 

Gunmerica will never stop until we stop the GOP, period. A majority of states are now open carry/permitless carry and more will die.

 

Gunmerica forever!

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

After both of The Justins were returned to the Tennessee House last week after being ejected by state Republicans, at least one Republican had robocalls thanking them for expelling "Antifa terrorists" from the legislature.

 

A new robocall is falsely accusing the three Tennessee Democratstargeted by Republicans for expulsion from the state legislature of being violent "Antifa" radicals.

Audio of the call, which was obtained by the Tennessee Holler, describes Tennessee Democrats Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson as "radical activists posing as elected officials” who purportedly "led an angry mob of Antifa intending violence" to the Tennessee State Capitol building earlier this month.

The robocall also falsely claimed that law enforcement officials confiscated "pipe bombs" from demonstrators protesting against the three Democrats' expulsion.

According to the Tennessee Holler, the calls were funded by right-wing organization Enlighten Tennessee, whose stated goal is to "preserve the Conservative economic principles which make Tennessee the greatest state in the country to live."

Gloria Johnson, the one Tennessee Democrat who survived the expulsion vote, reacted angrily to the robocall, which she decried as "disgusting."

"Antifa? Pipe bombs?" she asked incredulously. "I guess parents brought them in strollers with their babies and toddlers. I didn’t know they made brass knuckles for children. This is disgusting, disgraceful, and it’s going to get someone hurt."

Johnson also hinted at legal action against the call and revealed that she's "already have had my lawyer on the phone" to talk about options.

 

Republicans both inside and outside the state have repeatedly said that the expulsion of Justin Pearson and Justin Jones was justified because of their "terrorist, insurrectionist actions".  Now we see people are trying to get the Justins lynched.

Black Lives Still Matter. Even in Tennessee.

Sunday Long Read: Power Dril Nation

This week's Sunday Long Read is Nate Rogers's profile of legendary Twitter zeitgeist poster Paul "dril" Hochney in The Ringer, the man behind one of the most surreal and witty accounts of the last decade, making the trenchant observations of a digital world one shitpost at a time.

 

Dril is a real person, or so I had been told. Sitting in the House of Pies in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, I was waiting for him to join me in a booth—but I didn’t know who was actually going to show up.

It was the quiet midafternoon hours at the diner, which is a relic of when the area was less upscale, and it still partially attracts an off-key clientele of misfits and bozos, some of whom are alone and in no hurry to leave. (As I sat, an older man in oversized overalls walked by carrying a seat cushion; it was unclear whether he worked there.) This venue was the most readily available approximation of Dril’s world that I could think of.

While I waited, I pulled up Dril’s Twitter account and looked at a recent post: “The fact is,” he wrote, “people arent doing a good job wiping their ass these days. And its attracting all manner of stray dogs and coyotes to our towns.” The likes were ticking up and up in real time as they moved toward their eventual zenith of almost 17,000. By Dril standards, this wasn’t even a particularly popular—or deranged—post.

With 1.7 million highly engaged followers, Dril is one of the more powerful Twitter users and, by default, one of the more powerful figures on the internet. Active since 2008, the Dril account—simultaneously known by the profile name “Wint”—with its grainy Jack Nicholson avatar, has been responsible for countless viral posts, just as beloved for the vivid scenes they induce as for the baffling grammatical and spelling errors they contain. Many of his tweets have become part of the permanent online lexicon: “‘im not owned! im not owned!!’, i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob”; “issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’”; “i am selling six beautfiul, extremely ill, white horses. they no longer recognize me as their father, and are the Burden of my life.”

To most people, he is nothing; show the unaffiliated some of his posts, and they will likely just generate confusion and possibly anguish. (“Uh, so, I think I’ll stick with gardening. Where bull poop helps good things grow, and the tweets come from birds, not nitwits,” read one of many upset people in the comment section of a recent Washington Post feature about Dril, inadvertently adopting their own Dril-esque cadence in the process.) But to a large sect of the Very Online, he is king—the undisputed poet laureate of shitposting, the architect of a satire so effective that it has become impossible to tell when Dril stopped mocking the way people speak online and when we, instead, started speaking like Dril online.

For almost 10 years, he was entirely anonymous. Like a decent number of the people in the so-called “Weird Twitter” scene that Dril is still vaguely a part of, he doesn’t put his real name on the account—but as time has gone on and his popularity has grown, it’s become nothing short of miraculous that he’s kept up the mystery. He’s a pyramid-obsessed phantom. He’s banky. Still, over the years, some of his digital curtain has begun to part—largely spurred by his being doxxed in 2017, when his identity was revealed to supposedly be that of a man named Paul.

Around the same time, Dril started a Patreon, released a book, Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection, and had an Adult Swim television show, TruthPoint—a surrealist Infowars parody in which he manifested behind a cheap old man mask and bantered with self-professed “manic pixie stream boy” cohost Derek Estevez-Olsen. Dril also began doing an interview here and there, but never anything substantial, and always in character. I reached out to him via email, and when he replied, the name attached to the account was “paul d.” But I still wasn’t totally sure that he wouldn’t walk into House of Pies with his mask on, throw a plate against a wall, and then walk out.

“I’m Paul,” he said, once he found me and after I began by asking whom, exactly, I could say I was speaking to.

Paul Dochney, who is 35, does not, in fact, look like a mutant Jack Nicholson. He has soft features and a gentle disposition and looks something like a young Eugene Mirman. It’s difficult to say what I expected to find sitting across from me, but it wasn’t this. Looking at him, you’d never presume that this was the person who made candle purchasing a matter of financial insecurity.

He opted to stick with water—not a terrible decision at the House of Pies, but also, I worried, a choice that theoretically allowed him a quick exit at any point. For a while, I got the sense that he might have been deciding how much to reveal to me in real time, based on how the conversation went. But one thing he was clear about from the beginning: It was all right to end this game of living in the digital shadows.

“I mean, my name is already out there,” he said, acknowledging the fact that, after the doxxing, he had at separate points confirmed his name on both Twitter and Reddit. “It’s in my Wikipedia article. Maybe people need to grow up. Just accept that I’m not like Santa Claus. I’m not a magic elf who posts.”

In some sense, anonymity has served a creative purpose. “Practically, it’s a good tool,” Estevez-Olsen told me later in a phone interview, “because when you make a post, you don’t want to be like, ‘From Paul Dochney, I fuck flags’ or whatever. You want to have some distance from it.” (He would know: “Estevez-Olsen” is itself a TruthPoint stage name that he asked me to use for reasons of privacy.)

But the secrecy has also lingered because of the types of personalities Dril naturally attracts to his orbit. “Most people are normal,” Dochney explained. “But there’s, like, three or four weirdos who just ruin it for everyone.” Jon Hendren, a fellow titan of Weird Twitter who is known by his subtle handle, @fart, told me that he had seen some disturbing messages people had sent Dochney in the past—that he wasn’t being paranoid or dramatic. “It’s gotta be kind of surreal,” Hendren said. “And it’s got to be kind of difficult to live with.”

 

Before Elon Musk brings Twitter to a grinding halt with pieces of it falling off like a cartoon Ford Pinto, it's nice to know that yeah, social media in the 2010's and early 2020's was pretty good with people like dril in it.

 

Right before, you know, it all went to shit.

Last Call For In Which Zandar Asks Your Burning Questions, Con't

Lauren Gambino of The Guardian asks:

 

‘They created this’: are Republicans willing to lose elections to retain their abortion stance? 

 

Democrats have taken multiple actions in response to what they say is a “draconian” and “dangerous” decision by a federal judge in Texas threatening access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US.

Several Democratic governors have begun to stockpile doses of the drugs used in medication abortions. Nearly every Democrat in Congress signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to stay the decision, while some called on the Biden administration to simply “ignore” the ruling, should it be allowed to stand. A group of House Democrats introduced a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final approval over drugs used in medication abortion.

Their fury over the ruling has been met with relative silence from Republicans.

Only a handful of congressional Republicans offered immediate comment on judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision last week to revoke the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Just a fraction of Republicans on Capitol Hill signed an amicus brief urging an appeals court to uphold the ruling. And among the party’s national field of Republican presidential nominees, just one – the former vice-president, Mike Pence – unabashedly praised the decision.

The starkly different reactions underscores just how dramatically the politics of abortion have shifted since last June, when conservatives achieved their once-unimaginable goal of overturning Roe v Wade.

For decades, Republicans relied on abortion to rally their conservative base, calling for the reversal of Roe v Wade and vowing to outlaw the procedure if given the chance. But since the supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, abortion has emerged as a potent issue for Democrats, galvanizing voters furious over the thicket of state bans and restrictions ushered in by the decision.

Republicans have struggled to respond, lacking a unified policy on abortion in the nearly 10 months since the landmark decision.

 

I have to laugh, because the answer to that question is "Elections don't matter if Republicans control enough states to award the Republican 270 electoral votes."

It's possible that abortion costs the GOP some seats, but no Republican will survive a primary with a position to the left of Trump in any way.

Besides, SCOTUS is set to gut nearly all federal civil rights legislation in the next 15 months. The voting landscape in November 2024 is going to absolutely be a world apart from where it is now. And so far, Republicans haven't paid a price for much of anything. People are badly underestimating how much GOP supermajorities, gerrymandering, and SCOTUS being 6-3 conservative will conspire to make sure the GOP doesn't pay a price in my lifetime, either.

Even if you think Ron DeSantis, for example, will pay dearly in his 2024 run over Florida's abortion law, because he changed the rules in Florida, he'll still be Governor of Florida if he runs for the White House and loses. He may not be able to run again for Governor in 2026, but he can run in 2028 for President, and he can run for Governor again in 2030. He's younger than I am by 3 years. He'll only be 50 in 2028 and 52 in 2030. He has a long political career ahead of him, and there's no reason to think the GOP won't remain in total control of the state for decades to come.

So unless Democrats manage to dismantle these permanent gerrymandered walls, nothing will change.

Nothing.

Tik Tok Clock, Con't

Utah recently passed a bill limiting social media accounts for kids in response to the rise of TikTok as a national security threat, and if you think that the First Amendment issues with that bill are messy, Montana has apparently banned TikTok entirely this week.

 

MONTANA LAWMAKERS VOTED 54-43 today to ban TikTok from operating in the state and forbid app stores from offering it for download. The legislation is likely to become law, which would make Montana the first state in the US to ban the popular social media platform—a move that could spark a constitutional battle and endanger digital rights.

People who already have TikTok on their devices would not be in violation of the law, which will now go to Greg Gianforte, Montana's Republican governor. The move comes after years of amorphous assertions from the United States government under two presidential administrations that TikTok, which has 150 million US users, is a threat to national security because its parent, ByteDance, is a Chinese company.

Gianforte is expected to sign the new bill into law, which would take effect on January 1, 2024. In December, he banned TikTok from Montana government devices, a step other states have taken in recent months as well. In announcing that ban, Gianforte said, “I also encourage Montanans to protect their personal data and stop using TikTok.”

A statewide ban is radically different from a government device embargo and general encouragement, though. It has implications for Montana residents’ speech and ability to hear speech—rights protected under the US First Amendment.

“We’re under no illusions that this is not going to get challenged,” Montana attorney general Austin Knudsen told The New York Times on Wednesday. "I think this is the next frontier in First Amendment jurisprudence that’s probably going to have to come from the US Supreme Court. And I think that’s probably where this is headed."

Soon after today's vote, TikTok condemned the bill on both First Amendment and logistical grounds.

“The bill's champions have admitted that they have no feasible plan for operationalizing this attempt to censor American voices and that the bill's constitutionality will be decided by the courts,” TikTok spokesperson Brooke Oberwetter said in a statement. “We will continue to fight for TikTok users and creators in Montana whose livelihoods and First Amendment rights are threatened by this egregious government overreach.”

 

First Amendment issues in an age where regulating technology is rapidly outpacing federal oversight and legislation is the next big fight we're going to have, and we're not even ready to start having that particular conversation yet as a country. 

This is not going to go well at all.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Recent mass shootings in Lousisville and Nashville this month went completely ignored by DOnald Trump and the rest of the ammosexuals at this year's NRA Convention in nearby Indianapolis this weekend, because the solution to guns killing people in Gunmerica is always more guns!

 

Amid an advertised “14 acres of guns & gear” on display in Indianapolis, a phalanx of announced and unannounced 2024 GOP candidates paraded in front of rank-and-file members of the National Rifle Association’s leadership forum.

Pummeled by lawsuits and scandal in recent years, the NRA show went on this week in the shadow of a pair of mass shootings. In 2019, this event took place in the belly of the cavernous Lucas Oil Stadium. Now it’s reduced to a ballroom at the Indiana Convention Center and tiered ticket prices were dropped for free admission to fill out the room.

But the annual cattle call—which drew the likes of former President Donald Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, among others—stood out for its red-meat policy pitches on guns. (Former ambassador Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina all appeared by pre-recorded video messages.)

Even after recent mass shootings in Louisville and Nashville, none of the candidates staked out middle ground — thus shaping the contours of a familiar gun control debate ahead of 2024. Prior to the most recent shootings in Louisville and Nashville, a Gallup poll showed 63% of Americans are dissatisfied with gun laws.

You wouldn’t know it from listening to the speeches or the lusty applause they received inside the hall here this afternoon. The two parties seemed farther apart than ever on guns. Pence — who just four years ago came to Indianapolis and declared Indiana’s first-in-the-nation red flag law a possible national model to prevent mass shootings — made no mention of them from the stage. Instead, he called for expedited executions of perpetrators. Businessman and author Vivek Ramaswamy, who boasted about owning an AR-15 and received perhaps the warmest welcome of the crowd behind only Trump, called for the abolition of the FBI and ATF. Noem even went so far as to sign an executive order on stage, flanked by NRA CEO and Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre, putting an end to some banks’ recent efforts to stop lending to gun retailers and manufacturers.

And Trump, meanwhile, proposed reimbursing any teacher for the full cost of a concealed-carry firearm and training from highly qualified experts.

Elect Trump, the former president told the red hat-flecked crowd to close out the confab, “and no one will lay a finger on your firearms.”

“This is not a gun problem, this is a mental health problem, this is a social problem, this is a cultural problem, and this a spiritual problem,” Trump concluded, all but ending any prospect of gun control legislation among the GOP field ahead of 2024.

 

There will never be "moderation" in the Gunmerica Party. Stop pretending otherwise.

 

Until Republicans are voted out, nothing will happen.

Ron's Gone Completely Fucking Wrong

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed law one of arguably the most horrific, dystopian fascist decrees in the country right now, and understand that no matter who the GOP candidate for the White House in 2024 is, they will run on bringing this fascism to every corner of America.

First, how bad does your abortion ban have to be in order to make it into People Magazine? 

 

On Thursday, DeSantis announced that he signed the Heartbeat Protection Act into law, which will now require a woman to provide proof that the pregnancy was a result of rape, incest or human trafficking in order to receive an abortion up until 15 weeks of gestation.

Documentation can include a restraining order, police report, medical record or other evidence.

This restriction is an exception to the new law, which states that otherwise, abortions will be banned after six weeks unless done to save a pregnant person's life.

 

Read that again. Go on, I'll wait. 

You have to have documented proof of your rape, or you have to bear the rapist's child. The burden of proof is on the victim.

"We are proud to support life and family in the state of Florida," DeSantis, 44, said in a news release.

"I applaud the Legislature for passing the Heartbeat Protection Act that expands pro-life protections and provides additional resources for young mothers and families," he added.

The legislation comes exactly one year after the Florida governor signed a bill prohibiting abortions after 15 weeks. That law is currently being challenged before the Florida State Supreme Court. The new law would only go into effect if the previous 15-week law is upheld.

On Thursday, The White House issued its own rebuttal to the news that the bill had passed in Florida.

"This ban would prevent four million Florida women of reproductive age from accessing abortion care after six weeks — before many women even know they're pregnant," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement issued Thursday.

The statement added, "This ban would also impact the nearly 15 million women of reproductive age who live in abortion-banning states throughout the South, many of whom have previously relied on travel to Florida as an option to access care."

 

And yet, it potentially gets worse. Much worse.

Florida’s Senate Bill 1718 is much worse than even Arizona’s notorious SB 1070 in 2010, which turned every police officer in that state into an immigration agent. The wide-ranging assault would make it a felony for anyone to give someone they know or should “reasonably” know to be an undocumented immigrant a ride, a job or shelter, punishable by up to five years in prison — and up to 15 years if the immigrant is a minor.

In addition, the bill would ban out-of-state tuition waivers at colleges and universities for undocumented students; invalidate out-of-state licenses given to undocumented immigrants, such as those issued by California; prevent undocumented immigrants from becoming attorneys; require hospitals to collect data about the immigration status of patients and the costs they incur; and require that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement cooperate with federal immigration enforcement. The bill would also make it a felony for someone to use false identification to obtain a job and punish employers who don’t use the federal E-verify program to check immigrants’ documents.

Such changes would have a chilling effect on immigrant communities in Florida and turn good Samaritans or even family members into criminals. Clergy members who minister to undocumented immigrants would be forced to choose between helping those in need and their concern about potential criminal penalties. People who employ undocumented gardeners, nannies or housekeepers would have to fire them or face criminal charges.

Immigrants and immigrant advocacy organizations worry that the bill is so vague it could apply to mixed-status households, meaning U.S.-born children couldn’t give their undocumented parents a ride or allow them to stay overnight. And with a Republican supermajority in both houses of the Florida Legislature, the bill is likely to pass.

DeSantis said the crackdown is necessary “to protect” Florida residents from what he claims are President Biden’s open-border policies. That’s ridiculous. Of the 4.5 million immigrants in Florida, slightly more than 900,000 are undocumented. And they pay taxes — about $1.6 billion a year, according to the American Immigration Council.

Furthermore, the border is not open, and certainly not friendly to immigrants. Biden has continued and expanded the Trump-era policies of expelling migrants to Mexico or deporting them to their home countries, partly due to court challenges and pressure from Republicans.

Florida legislators eager to climb aboard the DeSantis hate train may laud him as a bold visionary, but this tired political ploy is just as likely to come back to bite them. That’s what happened more than a quarter-century ago after California Gov. Pete Wilson and the state Republican Party supported the rabidly anti-immigrant Proposition 187, which would have barred undocumented immigrants from receiving healthcare, public education and other services. The measure was declared unconstitutional and solidified Democratic control in the state. 

 

I'm hoping that the courts find both to be unconstitutional and that these laws cost DeSantis his political career. I'm probably wrong on the latter part, but if these stay as laws in Florida, thousands of regular people are going to go to prison for a very long time for helping women and undocumented immigrants, and it's going to make both categories of living, breathing human beings into subhuman pariahs.

Ron DeSantis is an absolute fucking monster, and I no longer hesitate to use that exact term to describe him.

 

 

 

Book Ban Bonanza, Con't

For now, a Texas county commission will keep their library open after a federal judge ordered the county reverse its book ban for the public library, which caused the Llano County, Texas county commissioners to consider closing the library rather than comply with the judge's order.

A small-town Texas library system threatened with extinction was spared Thursday after the Llano County commissioners said they would abide by a federal judge's order to restore the books they banned rather than shut the system down.

Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, who is the head of the county commission, made the announcement after county leaders heard from more than a dozen residents at an emergency meeting.

"The library will remain open while we try this in the courts, rather than through the news media," said Cunningham, who said the county has already spent more than $100,000 on legal costs and vowed to appeal the federal judge's decision.

Outside the county building, loud cheers could be heard as jubilant opponents of shutting down the libraries celebrated.

"That's a victory," the Rev. Kevin Henderson of Sunrise Beach Federated Church declared. "That's a victory for free speech!"

A disappointed Eva Carter disagreed. She said she was on the side of those who wanted to close the libraries and predicted the federal judge's ruling would be overturned on appeal.

“We need to fight it in the court system and get this salacious material removed," Carter, 82, said. "We have God on our side, and we expect he will get the glory when this is said and done.”

Before the commissioners made their decision, residents were given two minutes apiece to weigh in at an emergency meeting. And some of the first to speak denounced the commissioners for threatening the century-old system that, they said, has long been a vital part of the community and a haven for students seeking to do schoolwork and research.

They also dismissed as nonsense claims some in the community have made that the targeted books are pornographic.

"These books are not pornographic," librarian Suzette Baker, who works at the Kingsland branch of the system, told the commissioners.

Jeff Scoggins paused from livestreaming the meeting to warn the commissioners that they will hear it from the voters if they bow to a "minority" that is pushing to close the libraries.

It will be a black eye for Llano County, and "this could domino" to other Texas counties where local libraries have been targeted by small but vocal groups of conservative critics, Scoggins warned.

 

Of course, as Republicans target public schools, public libraries, public transportation and public services for elimination, it's up to us to get involved locally and fight to keep even basic governance. Republicans don't want any of it.

 

What they want are dumb, uneducated slaves who are suffering while they profit. And in a lot of red states, they are going to get that. Everyone gets to deal with church-based everything: health care, education, social services who only help who they see as worthy of it. Don't want to play ball? Suffer without, die or leave, it's all the same to the "Christians" running the show.

Last Call For Another Feinstein Mess You've Gotten Us Into

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein is recovering from shingles at home, but she's missed dozens of Senate votes as a result, and with both Feinstein and Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman out last month, judicial appointments have ground to a halt. Fetterman is back, but Feinstein won't be anytime soon, and the pressure is on for her resignation.

 

Senator Dianne Feinstein on Wednesday pushed back on calls for her resignation but asked to step away from the Judiciary Committee indefinitely while recovering from shingles, responding to mounting pressure from Democrats who have publicly vented concerns that she is unable to perform her job.

Ms. Feinstein, an 89-year-old California Democrat, has been away from the Senate since February, when she was diagnosed with the infection. Her absence has become a problem for Senate Democrats, limiting their ability to move forward with judicial nominations. In recent days, as it became clear she was not planning to return after a two-week recess, pressure began to increase for Ms. Feinstein to resign.

On Wednesday night, she said she would not do so, but offered a stopgap solution, saying she would request a temporary replacement on the panel.

“I understand that my absence could delay the important work of the Judiciary Committee,” Ms. Feinstein said in a statement on Wednesday night, after two House Democrats publicly called on her to leave the Senate. “So I’ve asked Leader Schumer to ask the Senate to allow another Democratic senator to temporarily serve until I’m able to resume my committee work.”

In a statement, a spokesman for Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said that Mr. Schumer would make that request of the Senate next week.

Replacing Ms. Feinstein on the committee would require Democrats to pass a resolution, which would need some degree of bipartisan support — either the unanimous consent of the Senate or 60 votes. It is not clear whether Republicans, who want to hold up President Biden’s judicial nominations, would support such a measure.

Ms. Feinstein has missed 58 Senate votes since February, and Democrats did not want to head into the spring and summer without the ability to move ahead on judicial nominations. Under the Senate’s current rules, a tie vote on a nomination in the committee means it fails and cannot be brought to the floor.

“I’m anxious, because I can’t really have a markup of new judge nominees until she’s there,” Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, told Politico last month.

There is zero reason for Mitch McConnell to go along with this, and he most likely won't. Delaying federal judicial appointments is what he'll relish doing.

The bigger problem is Feinstein's absence. Replacing herwould be a massive fight for her seat, something Democrats can't really afford right now even with the safest seat in the nation. It would be a lifetime appointment, and everyone knows it.

 

Oh, and nobody batted an eye when Fetterman took needed time off for medical reasons, that's a double standard for sure.

Having said that, another reason why Feinstein's continued absence is a problem: without her, Biden's pick to replace Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Julie Su, is DOA.

 

President Biden's nomination of Julie Su as Labor secretary is in serious danger, as Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has told the Biden administration he has deep reservations about her, according to people familiar with the situation.

Why it matters: For Biden, the cold, hard math of the divided Senate means that Manchin’s opposition — combined with one other Democratic defection— would scuttle Su’s chances.It would mark the third defeat of a Biden nominee this year, a reflection of how a few Democrats who face tough re-election races in 2024 have resisted being seen as rubber stamps for Biden's picks.

Two previous Biden nominees — Gigi Sohn for an open seat on the Federal Communications Commission, and Phil Washington to lead the Federal Aviation Administration — withdrew after Democrats signaled their opposition.
The 49 Republicans in the 100-seat Senate are expected to uniformly oppose Su. There are concerns among Senate Democrats backing Su that Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat-turned-independent, also will vote no, though she has not said so.

The big picture: With Senate Democrats facing a difficult map in 2024, vulnerable senators such as Manchin, Sinema and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) are looking for ways to create some political space from Biden, whose approval/disapproval rating is an 8 points underwater in national polls, according to a Real Clear Politics polling average.

 

Sinema wouldn't need to vote no to kill the nomination, it would be 50-49 against with Manchin being himself and Feinstein gone.

 

Dems are going to need to figure this out and soon.

He's Playing The Discordians In A Prison Band

If the Washington Post investigation is correct, the young racist, anti-semitic MAGA gun-lover who leaked Pentagon war plans for Ukraine to the world did it for, in fact, the luls.

 

The man behind a massive leak of U.S. government secrets that has exposed spying on allies, revealed the grim prospects for Ukraine’s war with Russia and ignited diplomatic fires for the White House is a young, charismatic gun enthusiast who shared highly classified documents with a group of far-flung acquaintances searching for companionship amid the isolation of the pandemic.

United by their mutual love of guns, military gear and God, the group of roughly two dozen — mostly men and boys — formed an invitation-only clubhouse in 2020 on Discord, an online platform popular with gamers. But they paid little attention last year when the man some call “OG” posted a message laden with strange acronyms and jargon. The words were unfamiliar, and few people read the long note, one of the members explained. But he revered OG, the elder leader of their tiny tribe, who claimed to know secrets that the government withheld from ordinary people.

The young member read OG’s message closely, and the hundreds more that he said followed on a regular basis for months. They were, he recalled, what appeared to be near-verbatim transcripts of classified intelligence documents that OG indicated he had brought home from his job on a “military base,” which the member declined to identify. OG claimed he spent at least some of his day inside a secure facility that prohibited cellphones and other electronic devices, which could be used to document the secret information housed on government computer networks or spooling out from printers. He annotated some of the hand-typed documents, the member said, translating arcane intel-speak for the uninitiated, such as explaining that “NOFORN” meant the information in the document was so sensitive it must not be shared with foreign nationals.

OG told the group he toiled for hours writing up the classified documents to share with his companions in the Discord server he controlled. The gathering spot had been a pandemic refuge, particularly for teen gamers locked in their houses and cut off from their real-world friends. The members swapped memes, offensive jokes and idle chitchat. They watched movies together, joked around and prayed. But OG also lectured them about world affairs and secretive government operations. He wanted to “keep us in the loop,” the member said, and seemed to think that his insider knowledge would offer the others protection from the troubled world around them.

“He’s a smart person. He knew what he was doing when he posted these documents, of course. These weren’t accidental leaks of any kind,” the member said.

The transcribed documents OG posted traversed a range of sensitive subjects that only people who had undergone months-long background checks would be authorized to see. There were top-secret reports about the whereabouts and movements of high-ranking political leaders and tactical updates on military forces, the member said. Geopolitical analysis. Insights into foreign governments’ efforts to interfere with elections. “If you could think it, it was in those documents.”

In those initial posts, OG had given his fellow members a small sip of the torrent of secrets that was to come. When rendering hundreds of classified files by hand proved too tiresome, he began posting hundreds of photos of documents themselves, an astonishing cache of secrets that has been steadily spilling into public view over the past week, disrupting U.S. foreign policy and aggravating America’s allies.

This account of how detailed intelligence documents intended for an exclusive circle of military leaders and government decision-makers found their way into and then out of OG’s closed community is based in part on several lengthy interviews with the Discord group member, who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity. He is under 18 and was a young teenager when he met OG. The Post obtained consent from the member’s mother to speak to him and to record his remarks on video. He asked that his voice not be obscured.

His account was corroborated by a second member who read many of the same classified documents shared by OG, and who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. Both members said they know OG’s real name as well as the state where he lives and works but declined to share that information while the FBI is hunting for the source of the leaks. The investigation is in its early stages, and the Pentagon has set up its own internal review led by a senior official.

“An interagency effort has been stood up, focused on assessing the impact these photographed documents could have on U.S. national security and on our Allies and partners,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said in a statement.

Discord said in a statement that it is cooperating with law enforcement and has declined to comment further.

The Post also reviewed approximately 300 photos of classified documents, most of which have not been made public; some of the text documents OG is said to have written out; an audio recording of a man the two group members identified as OG speaking to his companions; and chat records and photographs that show OG communicating with them on the Discord server.

The young member was impressed by OG’s seemingly prophetic ability to forecast major events before they became headline news, things “only someone with this kind of high clearance” would know. He was by his own account enthralled with OG, who he said was in his early to mid-20s.

“He’s fit. He’s strong. He’s armed. He’s trained. Just about everything you can expect out of some sort of crazy movie,” the member said.

In a video seen by The Post, the man who the member said is OG stands at a shooting range, wearing safety glasses and ear coverings and holding a large rifle. He yells a series of racial and antisemitic slurs into the camera, then fires several rounds at a target.

The member seemed drawn to OG’s bravado and his skill with weapons. He felt a certain kinship with a man he described as “like an uncle” and, on another occasion, as a father figure.

“I was one of the very few people in the server that was able to understand that these [documents] were legitimate,” the member said, setting himself apart from the others who mostly ignored OG’s posts.

“It felt like I was on top of Mount Everest,” he said. “I felt like I was above everyone else to some degree and that … I knew stuff that they didn’t.”

I've said this before, but I meant it: If you or I committed even a small fraction of the classified document mishandlings that Donald Trump did with his little souvenir box in his pool closet in Mar-a-Lago, you'd be in federal prison for the rest of your life. 

This guy, and pretty much everyone involved with him on that Discord?

We're talking centuries of federal prison time and these assholes are going to get buried under concrete and forgotten. None of these guys are going to see the outside of a correctional facility unless it's the final trip out in a bag.

Besides, the damage done here is catastrophic. Putin himself couldn't have wanted better intel, and you can count on it being used against us for years to come.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Signs that Special Counsel Jack Smith is moving on not one, but two fronts this week, closing in on Donald Trump in a big way.  First up, Smith is getting testimony from Trump's circle over news that Trump may have been sharing classified material with his flunkies, material that they would not be cleared for even if it was legal for Trump to still have the documents.

 

Federal investigators are asking witnesses whether former President Donald J. Trump showed off to aides and visitors a map he took with him when he left office that contains sensitive intelligence information, four people with knowledge of the matter said.

The map has been just one focus of the broad Justice Department investigation into Mr. Trump’s handling of classified documents after he departed the White House.

The nature of the map and the information it contained is not clear. But investigators have questioned a number of witnesses about it, according to the people with knowledge of the matter, as the special counsel overseeing the Justice Department’s Trump-focused inquiries, Jack Smith, examines the former president’s handling of classified material after leaving office and weighs charges that could include obstruction of justice.

One person briefed on the matter said investigators have asked about Mr. Trump showing the map while aboard a plane. Another said that, based on the questions they were asking, investigators appeared to believe that Mr. Trump showed the map to at least one adviser after leaving office.

A third person with knowledge of the investigation said the map might also have been shown to a journalist writing a book. The Washington Post has previously reported that investigators have asked about Mr. Trump showing classified material, including maps, to political donors.

The question of whether Mr. Trump was displaying sensitive material in his possession after he lost the presidency and left office is crucial as investigators try to reconstruct what Mr. Trump was doing with boxes of documents that went with him to his Florida residence and private club, Mar-a-Lago.

Among the topics investigators have been focused on is precisely when Mr. Trump was at the club last year. In particular, they were interested in whether he remained at Mar-a-Lago to look at boxes of material that were still stored there before Justice Department counterintelligence officials seeking their return came to visit in early June, according to two people familiar with the questions.

 

If Trump showed off these documents to donors and flunkies at Mar-a-Lago, and that information got passed on to foreign nationals who we already know were hanging out at his club, Trump is in massive trouble. That's not just mishandling classified material, that's espionage, folks.

You go to a small iron box for that.

Oh, and there's now the "fundraising off January 6th" campaign fraud angle too.

Federal prosecutors probing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol have in recent weeks sought a wide range of documents related to fundraising after the 2020 election, looking to determine if Trump or his advisers scammed donors by using false claims about voter fraud to raise money, eight people familiar with the new inquiries said.

Special counsel Jack Smith’s office has sent subpoenas in recent weeks to Trump advisers and former campaign aides, Republican operatives and other consultants involved in the 2020 presidential campaign, the people said. They have also heard testimony from some of these figures in front of a Washington grand jury, some of the people said.

The eight people with knowledge of the investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.

The fundraising prong of the investigation is focused on money raised during the period between Nov. 3, 2020, and the end of Trump’s time in office on Jan. 20, 2o21, and prosecutors are said to be interested in whether anyone associated with the fundraising operation violated wire fraud laws, which make it illegal to make false representations over email to swindle people out of money.

The new subpoenas received since the beginning of March, which have not been previously reported, show the breadth of Smith’s investigation, as Trump embarks on a campaign for reelection while assailing the special counsel investigation and facing charges of falsifying business records in New York and a separate criminal investigation in Georgia.

The subpoenas seek more specific types of communications so that prosecutors can compare what Trump allies and advisers were telling each other privately about the voter-fraud claims with what they were saying publicly in appeals that generated more than $200 million in donations from conservatives, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.

That suggests that investigators are pursuing a legal theory similar to the one used to charge former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon and others with fraudulent fundraising to build a wall along the southern border, in which Bannon and others were charged with defrauding donors by lying in email pitches. Bannon’s three co-defendants pleaded guilty or were convicted, while Bannon was pardoned by Trump before he faced trial. Bannon now faces similar charges from the Manhattan district attorney and awaits trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

 

Lying about voter fraud in order to fundraise is in fact, campaign fraud. 

When Smith's hammer falls, Trump is going to be obliterated.

Last Call For Outfoxed And Outnumbered, Con't

Things are going tremendously badly for Fox News in the Domain Voting Services defamation case against the network, and the more the proceedings go on, the worse things are getting for Rupert Murdoch and friends.

 

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis on Wednesday sanctioned Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp., for withholding evidence in the Dominion defamation suit, and said he's considering further investigation and censure.

According to a person present in the courtroom, lawyers for Dominion Voting Systems played recordings Fox News producer Abby Grossberg made during 2020, which were not handed over to Dominion's lawyers during discovery.

Grossberg, a former producer for Fox hosts Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, has sued Fox News and said her deposition was coerced. In an amended filing Tuesday, she said she had recorded conversations with Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell and others.

The sanction gives Dominion a chance to conduct another deposition, at Fox’s expense.

"As counsel explained to the Court, FOX produced the supplemental information from Ms. Grossberg when we first learned it," Fox News said in a statement Wednesday.

The surprise evidence and sanction comes days before the trial is scheduled to begin in the $1.6 billion defamation case Dominion Voting Systems filed against Fox News and Fox Corp. Davis also said Wednesday he was considering appointing a special master to investigate the Fox legal teams' actions.

In a statement, Grossberg's attorneys said she would be willing to speak with a special master if one is appointed.

“We are pleased that the Court recognized the very serious apparent discovery-related and other gross misconduct perpetrated by Fox News and its team of high-powered attorneys in relation to the Dominion v. Fox lawsuit that our client, Abby Grossberg, has courageously and repeatedly revealed in her lawsuits against the Network," Parisis G. Filippatos and Tanvir H. Rahman said Wednesday.

"Ms. Grossberg remains committed to speaking the truth in all appropriate forums, including before a Special Master appointed by the Court, while our firm will continue to ensure that she obtains the justice she deserves,” they added.

On Tuesday, Davis expressed frustration at Fox News for not being straightforward about Rupert Murdoch's role as a leader at Fox News.

"This is a problem," Davis said, according to a court transcript. "I need to feel comfortable when you represent something to me that is the truth."

 

Fox News is going to get burned to the ground, and a better outcome for America couldn't be scripted. 

In all seriousness I expect this case to be tied up for years in appeals and courtroom drama, and in the end I expect a settlement that heavily favors Dominion.

But it does mean Fox News may have to apologies publicly, and denounce Trump's Big Lie as a result.

National Public Revolution

After being labeled as "state-sponsored media" by Elon Musk's Twitter (later changed this week to "state-affiliated media,") National Public Radio is leaving the social media service completely.

NPR will no longer post fresh content to its 52 official Twitter feeds, becoming the first major news organization to go silent on the social media platform. In explaining its decision, NPR cited Twitter's decision to first label the network "state-affiliated media," the same term it uses for propaganda outlets in Russia, China and other autocratic countries.

The decision by Twitter last week took the public radio network off guard. When queried by NPR tech reporter Bobby Allyn, Twitter owner Elon Musk asked how NPR functioned. Musk allowed that he might have gotten it wrong.

Twitter then revised its label on NPR's account to "government-funded media." The news organization says that is inaccurate and misleading, given that NPR is a private, nonprofit company with editorial independence. It receives less than 1 percent of its $300 million annual budget from the federally funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

By going silent on Twitter, NPR's chief executive says the network is protecting its credibility and its ability to produce journalism without "a shadow of negativity."

"The downside, whatever the downside, doesn't change that fact," NPR CEO John Lansing said in an interview. "I would never have our content go anywhere that would risk our credibility."

In a BBC interview posted online Wednesday, Musk suggested he may further change the label to "publicly funded." His words did not sway NPR's decision makers. Even if Twitter were to drop the designation altogether, Lansing says the network will not immediately return to the platform.

"At this point I have lost my faith in the decision-making at Twitter," he says. "I would need some time to understand whether Twitter can be trusted again.

NPR is instituting a "two-week grace period" so the staff who run the Twitter accounts can revise their social-media strategies. Lansing says individual NPR journalists and staffers can decide for themselves whether to continue using Twitter.

In an email to staff explaining the decision, Lansing wrote, "It would be a disservice to the serious work you all do here to continue to share it on a platform that is associating the federal charter for public media with an abandoning of editorial independence or standards."

 

Elon Musk owns Twitter and makes the rules.

 

The rest of the world doesn't have to play ball, as Elon Musk is finding out.

Besides, making news outlets pay $1000 a month for verification status is, quite frankly, extortion.

Book Ban Bonanza

A federal judge earlier this month ordered that children's' books banned by county commission officials in Llano County, Texas's only public library be returned to shelves as county commissioners violated the Constitution. This week, the county commission is considering their response to the judge's order and will be voting on whether or not they should be permanently closing the county's library.

 

A small Texas county is weighing whether to shut down its public library system after a federal judge ruled the commissioners violated the constitution by banning a dozen mostly children's books and ordered that they be put back in circulation.

The Llano County commissioners have scheduled for Thursday a special meeting in which the first item on the agenda is whether to "continue or cease operations" at the library.

Leila Green Little, one of the seven local residents who successfully sued the county for banning the books, fired off an email Monday urging county residents to attend the special meeting and give the commissioners an earful.

“We may not get another opportunity to save our library system and, more importantly, the public servants who work there,” Little wrote.

In the message, Little also included a screenshot of a text message that Bonnie Wallace, who is vice chairman of the Llano County Library Advisory Board, sent to one of her supporters. It was obtained by the seven residents as part of the discovery for the civil suit they filed against the county on April 25, 2022.

It read, in part, "the judge has said, if we lose the injunction, he will CLOSE the library because he WILL NOT put the porn back in the kid's section!"

Wallace, who did not return a call for comment from NBC News, was referring to Llano County Judge Ron Cunningham, according to Little. The judge also did not return a call from NBC News. It was not immediately clear what books Wallace was describing as "porn."

The books that Llano County officials removed from the library shelves include Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents”; "They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group" by Susan Campbell Bartoletti; the graphic novel "Spinning" by Tillie Walden; and three books from Dawn McMillan’s “I Need a New Butt!” series.

Last year, an assistant principal at a Mississippi elementary school was fired after he read “I Need a New Butt!” to a second-grade class. The reason? Because the book used words like “butt” and “fart” and included cartoon images of a child’s butt.

Also removed from the library were Maurice Sendak’s "In the Night Kitchen"; Robie H. Harris’ "It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health"; and four other children's picture books with "silly themes and rhymes," like "Larry the Farting Leprechaun," "Gary the Goose and His Gas on the Loose"; "Freddie the Farting Snowman" and "Harvey the Heart Has Too Many Farts," according to the complaint.

The Llano County emergency meeting was called after U.S. District Court Judge Robert Pitman ruled last week in favor of the seven local residents who sued Cunningham, Wallace, the Llano County commissioners, and the other library board members for removing the books.

"Defendants claim to be on a hunt to eradicate 'pornographic' materials," the residents said in their complaint. "This is a pretext; none of the books Defendants have targeted is pornographic."

 

So yes, we've reached the point where screeching conservatives afraid of kids reading about butts and white hoods would rather shut down libraries than allow kids to read.

 

Republicans are getting involved in local government to shut that government and its services down: libraries, schools, public transportation, social services, the whole thing. They're doing so in order to keep the populace ignorant, miserable, and under control.

 

Of course, those who can afford books and private schools and cars and don't need social service programs will be fine. The rest of us are screwed, because we don't count as human anyway. The cost of civilization and all that has become "I got mine, now I'm taking yours."

 

The GOP way.