October 22, 2021

DeSantis' Surgeon General Outdoes Demon Sperm Doc

Joseph Lapado undermines vaccines with a patina of rationality.

At least you knew right away that Dr. Stella Immanuel was nuts when she spoke about demon semen.

The far more dangerous of the white-coated figures of America’s Frontline Doctors who appeared in a press conference outside the U.S. Supreme Court last year was Dr. Joseph Lapado.

Lapado gave the impression of talking sense until you realized that he was joining Immanuel in endorsing hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID-19 despite extensive scientific research finding it had no therapeutic value and might even be dangerous.

The event in which Lapado and Immanuel participated conveyed so much dangerous misinformation that Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube took down the resulting video.

But on Thursday, there was no talk of incubus spunk to tip people off to the falsehoods at another press conference attended by Lapado, this one outside an airplane hangar in Clearwater, Florida.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/joseph-lapado-ron-desantis-surgeon-general-outdoes-demon-sperm-doc-stella-immanuel

October 22, 2021

Bannon Caught Fleeing U.S. Disguised as Man Who Recently Took Shower

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Steve Bannon was caught attempting to flee the United States disguised as a man who had recently taken a shower, T.S.A. officials have confirmed.

A T.S.A. agent at Reagan National Airport, Harland Dorrinson, explained how Bannon’s talent as a master of disguise nearly enabled him to board a plane to Moscow.

“He showered, shaved, and even combed his hair,” Dorrinson said. “He was totally unrecognizable.”

Bannon’s plan crumbled, however, during a routine pat down. “That’s when we noticed that his pants had a large mustard stain,” the T.S.A. agent said. “They evidently had not been laundered in months. One of my colleagues shouted, ‘It’s Bannon! Stop him!’ ”

Taken into custody, the former White House adviser seemed bitter about his foiled escape attempt. “I took a shower for no fucking reason,” he said.

https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/bannon-caught-fleeing-us-disguised-as-man-who-recently-took-shower

October 22, 2021

Dune?

Was wondering if anyone has caught the film yet.

I reread the book this past summer and thought it would be challenging to transfer adequately to film. The book seemed to be more space opera (focused mainly on interactions between factions in a future feudal world) than a rollicking adventure.

October 21, 2021

Indiana Cops Find People Chained Up in 'Gruesome' House of Horrors

A 36-year-old Indiana woman is behind bars after police discovered two people tied up and shackled in her home—one of them “deceased and beyond help.”

The woman, identified by Evansville authorities as Heidi Carter, faces a string of charges in connection with the Tuesday night incident, which police say took even them by surprise.

It all began after a woman flagged down an Indiana State Trooper late Tuesday night, saying she’d stopped by Carter’s home only to find “a dead body” inside, Evansville Police Department Spokeswoman Sgt. Anna Gray told reporters late Wednesday. The woman said she’d gone to the home to help clean ahead of an inspection, and took a seat on a pile of blankets only to realize “that under the blankets was a dead body,” an arrest affidavit says, according to The Evansville Courier & Press.

She ran out of the house screaming and alerted authorities. State police and officers from the Evansville Police Department responded around 11 p.m., assuming they were dealing with a “possible kidnapping and murder.”

https://news.yahoo.com/indiana-cops-people-chained-gruesome-160036226.html

There are some really terrible people out there.

October 21, 2021

Sheriff charged with falsely reporting Black newspaper carrier to police

A sheriff in Washington state has been charged with two misdemeanors for falsely accusing a Black man delivering newspapers in January of making threats against him — an incident that led to a significant police response in a suburban neighborhood.

The Washington state attorney general’s office on Tuesday charged Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer, who is White, with one count of false reporting and one count of making a false or misleading statement to a public servant, the office said.

In the early morning of Jan. 27 in Tacoma, Wash., Sedrick Altheimer, a Black newspaper carrier in his 20s, was working his route in his car and making deliveries to homes when he noticed a white SUV that appeared to be following him.

Altheimer asked Troyer, who was driving the vehicle, if he was a cop, according to court documents. Altheimer in the documents said Troyer did not answer, nor did he identify himself as the sheriff or a law enforcement officer.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/10/21/ed-troyer-washington-sheriff-false-reporting/

October 21, 2021

Texas says Supreme Court should leave in place controversial abortion law

Source: Washington Post

Texas officials urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to leave in place the restrictive abortion law that has effectively shut down the procedure in the nation’s second-largest state.

But if the court takes up the issue on an expedited basis, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a new filing, it should use the opportunity to overturn Roe v. Wade and the constitutional right to abortion that has been in place nearly 50 years.

“As has been expressed by multiple justices, the idea that the Constitution requires States to permit a woman to abort her unborn child is unsupported by any constitutional text, history, or tradition,” the filing says, asking the court to reconsider Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which affirmed the right in 1992. “The court erred in recognizing the right to abortion in Roe and in continuing to preserve it in Casey.”

But Texas said the court need not take up those issues. Instead, it says, the court should find that the Biden administration lacks standing to challenge the Texas law in federal court.

Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-abortion-law-supreme-court/2021/10/21/05c7ae32-3282-11ec-9241-aad8e48f01ff_story.html

October 21, 2021

DeSantis says he'll 'fortify' parental rights in Florida schools

He also said he will not cooperate with any federal investigations into parents.

Surrounded by select parents, lawmakers and law enforcement officers, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday declared his intention to “fortify” parental rights when it comes to dealing with the public schools.

He took particular issue with the plan by President Joe Biden’s administration to have federal law enforcement review threats made against school board members. Citing an increase in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence against board members, teachers and other school employees, the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this month announced it would monitor the situation.

The National School Boards Association sent a letter to Biden raising concerns about “domestic terrorism” targeting boards. Although the association did not mention parents, and the Justice Department did not call for investigations, DeSantis and others have framed the issue as a federal attempt to curtail parental rights.

DeSantis said Wednesday that federal officials were trying to intimidate parents from speaking their minds on controversial issues at board meetings.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/10/20/desantis-says-hell-fortify-parent-rights-with-florida-schools/

Headline should read "DeSantis Sides with Disruptive Anti-Vax School Board Meeting Assholes".

October 21, 2021

My people are Americans

I, Leonard Pitts, venerate the ideals on which this country was founded.

I’ve got something to say about “you people.”

That, as you may recall, was how I referred, in a recent column, to Mike Pence and others who have apparently sworn an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Florida taco bowl connoisseur who used to be president. It left a handful of readers well and truly irked. As one of them put it: “‘You people?’ How dare you lump all Trump voters like that.”

Well, dear reader, I cannot tell a lie. That objectifying language was no accident. Rather, it was designed to make a point. In order to understand that point, you have to understand something else:

I’m an American. By that, I don’t simply mean that I’m a U.S. citizen, though I am. But what I really mean is that I venerate the ideals on which this country was founded.

Unalienable rights. Life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness. Freedom of speech. Of faith. Of conscience. Government by consent of the governed. Equality before the law. Because of those ideals, America already was a revolution even before it won independence from England. Despite themselves, a band of slaveholding white men somehow founded a nation based on an aspirational, transformational declaration of fundamental human rights.

And then came the taco bowl connoisseur and his acolytes. Their values — more accurately, their lack of values — have coarsened the country, impoverished its spirit, debased what once was revered. Like something out of “It Can’t Happen Here,” Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 novel of a fascist takeover, our foundational ideals suddenly seem flimsy and insubstantial, thin tissues of fidelity in a hurricane of contempt.

https://www.tampabay.com/opinion/2021/10/20/my-people-are-americans-column/

October 20, 2021

Ouch!

October 20, 2021

Experts Warn Everything That Will Happen Between Now And November 2022 Could Spell Trouble For Dems

WASHINGTON—Stressing that literally any occurrence in the coming year might threaten the party’s fragile hold on power, political experts warned Wednesday that everything that will happen between now and November 2022 could spell trouble for Democrats in the midterms.

“Unfortunately for Democrats, anything that occurs in the next 12 months—really anything at all—could be a portent of a midterm upset,” said political analyst Gary Chiang, describing how every coming event that transpires before the election could have serious repercussions for the Democratic Party, including passing climate change legislation, not passing climate change legislation, a proxy war in Asia, Nancy Pelosi sitting down in a chair, the death of giant panda Mei Xiang, winning down-ballot races, the complete implementation of the Build Back Better agenda, or a shortage of turkey around Thanksgiving.

“An oil spill in the Gulf Coast? That’s a worrying sign for Democrats. On the other hand, a cloudy day in Washington in January? That could also prove disastrous come November. Really anything that happens in America or abroad from here on out might destroy the party’s chances to retain their congressional majority.”

Chiang added that the only event that would not spell doom for Democrats would be for the White House to announce a full-scale ground invasion of Afghanistan.

https://www.theonion.com/experts-warn-everything-that-will-happen-between-now-an-1847901377