September 14, 2021

Israel's Top COVID Truther Claimed COVID That Killed Him Was 'Poison' Attack

His brother is urging a legion of followers to get vaccinated. “I wish I managed to convince him to save his own life,” he said on the way to the funeral.

One of Israel’s top anti-vaxx activists has died of COVID-19, two days after posting a final message to his followers that ordered them to “keep fighting” against the shot that could have saved his life.

Hai Shoulian, 57, spent much of the pandemic organizing protests against coronavirus rules—including mask mandates and Israel’s vaccine-passport scheme, the Green Pass. He lost his life to COVID-19 on Monday morning after spending 10 days at Tel Aviv’s Wolfson Medical Center.

His brother, Avi, told The Daily Beast that his family felt like they had been torn apart, as he headed to his brother’s funeral on Tuesday. “Our dad used to say that every table has four legs and we were four, that was our family motto,” he said, tearfully. “And since yesterday we’re three.”

Avi said his brother’s death certificate lists the coronavirus as the cause of death. He said he decided to speak to the media to encourage his brother’s followers to take the vaccine “and save their lives.” The brother added: “I wish I managed to convince him to save his own life.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/hai-shaulian-israels-top-covid-truther-claimed-covid-that-killed-him-was-poison-attack

September 14, 2021

Thousands of Sarasota parents seek doctor's note exempting kids from school mask mandate

VENICE – Thousands of people showed up Sunday for a mask-exemption event, where families could get a note from a doctor medically clearing their children from wearing a mask in public schools.

The Hollow, a wedding venue in Venice, hosted the waiver mill on its property in a rural area of the county.

The event included a cookout, a visit from former President Donald Trump's original national security adviser Michael Flynn and armed guards. But the main attraction was the two doctors giving out mask exemptions.

Sarasota Schools Spokesman Craig Maniglia said the district did not yet know how many new forms were turned in Monday, but they were bracing for up to 2,000.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2021/09/14/sarasota-schools-mask-mandate-loophole-leads-huge-crowds-seek-doctors-note/8315459002/

September 13, 2021

DeSantis threatens 'millions' in fines for cities and counties for vaccine mandates

Source: Tampa Bay Times

“We are not going to let people get fired because of the vaccine mandate,” DeSantis said.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis said Florida will fine local governments $5,000 for each employee who is required to be vaccinated, threatening some cities and counties with millions of dollars in penalties for adopting strict vaccine “mandates.”

During a Monday news conference in Alachua County, DeSantis vowed to fight that city’s requirement that employees be vaccinated by the end of the month or be fired.

“We are not going to let people get fired because of the vaccine mandate,” DeSantis said. “You don’t just cast aside people who have been serving faithfully over this issue, over what’s basically a personal choice over their individual health.”

The result could be the state imposing millions of dollars in fines under a new state law barring Florida businesses and local governments from requiring proof of a vaccine “to gain access to, entry upon, or service from the governmental entity’s operations in this state.” A new Department of Health rule enforcing the law is set to take effect Thursday.

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/09/13/desantis-threatens-millions-in-fines-for-cities-and-counties-for-vaccine-mandates/

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Looks as if DeSantis doesn't want to let Abbott get all the recognition as the leading asshole Republican governor.

September 13, 2021

Fascism: Majority of Republicans say belief in Trump election hoax important part of Republicanism

The hoax-promoting Sen. Josh Hawley will go down in history as a traitor to his country. He won't be alone.

A new CNN poll shows the nation remains politically divided, and by "politically divided" that primarily means Republicans continue to lurch farther and farther into hoax-promoting, anti-democratic extremism.

Two specific poll questions are worth calling out. The first is that about six in ten self-identified Republicans claim to believe that "supporting Donald Trump" is either a "very" or "somewhat" important part of "what being a Republican means to you." This is a bit weird, because Donald Trump is ... not in office. He has no current position. He is retired, bumbling around at Mar-a-Lago regaling wedding guests with stories of how the world has wronged him, interspersing rounds of Florida golf with promotional appearances at cult meet-ups and pay-per-view boxing matches. Donald Trump does not currently need any "support," but the question has a nearly identical response breakdown to a much more interesting poll question that this question probably acts as one-to-one proxy for.

That question? Whether "believing that Donald Trump won the 2020 election" is a "very" or "somewhat" important part of Republicanism. Those responses are near-identical, with 6 in 10 Republicans agreeing that it is.

The notion that Donald Trump "won" the 2020 election is a hoax. It's specifically a fascist-promoted hoax intended to discredit democratic elections themselves, because a good chunk of the party (six in ten, apparently) would rather burn democracy itself down than tolerate a world in which a self-promotional tax-dodging rapist incompetent gets booted after only one term in office. There is not even a scratch of evidence to support that Trump "won" an election in which he was quite soundly defeated. Not a single shred of evidence was found to back the Trump camp's propagandistic claims of "voter fraud." There is no state electoral count that could even be plausibly contested. There's nothing. The notion that Trump "won" is entirely the fabrication of a set of Trump allies who crafted it either to coddle the bruised ego of a delusional decompensating narcissist, as means for overthrowing the United States government, or both.

It is fascist propaganda. It is the equivalent of proclaiming that vaccinations turn you magnetic or that a political opponent is in fact a lizard person. It's not just false, but a toxic attempt to do harm for the sake of doing harm.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/9/12/2051849/-Fascism-Majority-of-Republicans-say-belief-in-Trump-election-hoax-important-part-of-Republicanism

September 13, 2021

Recall election nears, but California's widening, ugly political divide here to stay

As the California recall winds down to its final hours, a central question has emerged that will probably dog gubernatorial hopefuls and voters into the upcoming 2022 election.

How much more of this can we take?

Though the current referendum on Gov. Gavin Newsom will wrap up on Tuesday — with recent polls strongly suggesting that he will prevail — the regular election is only a year off. Like wildfires, campaigning is no longer confined to a season.

Election efforts will probably keep rolling forward, making the recall one more chapter in a continuing storyline of identity politics that has captivated some, bored others and, for many, become an endurance test of civic engagement.

If Newsom loses on Tuesday, that upset could reshuffle the Democratic deck. If he retains office, the same slate of candidates is predicted to run again in 2022, though most, including Republican front-runner Larry Elder, have declined to state their intent until votes are counted.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-09-12/the-recall-is-winding-down-but-dont-expect-the-campaigns-to-end

I suspect the recall will backfire spectacularly and further drive voters away from the California Republican party.

September 12, 2021

False Election Claims in California Reveal a New Normal for G.O.P.

In an echo of 2020, Republicans are pushing baseless allegations of cheating in the state’s recall race even before Election Day.

The results of the California recall election won’t be known until Tuesday night. But some Republicans are already predicting victory for the Democrat, Gov. Gavin Newsom, for a reason that should sound familiar.

Voter fraud.

Soon after the recall race was announced in early July, the embers of 2020 election denialism ignited into new false claims on right-wing news sites and social media channels. This vote, too, would supposedly be “stolen,” with malfeasance ranging from deceptively designed ballots to nefariousness by corrupt postal workers.

As a wave of recent polling indicated that Mr. Newsom was likely to brush off his Republican challengers, the baseless allegations accelerated. Larry Elder, a leading Republican candidate, said he was “concerned” about election fraud. The Fox News commentators Tomi Lahren and Tucker Carlson suggested that wrongdoing was the only way Mr. Newsom could win. And former President Donald J. Trump predicted that it would be “a rigged election.”

This swift embrace of false allegations of cheating in the California recall reflects a growing instinct on the right to argue that any lost election, or any ongoing race that might result in defeat, must be marred by fraud. The relentless falsehoods spread by Mr. Trump and his allies about the 2020 election have only fueled such fears.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/politics/gop-voter-fraud-california-recall.html

September 12, 2021

Behind the Texas Abortion Law, a Persevering Conservative Lawyer

Jonathan Mitchell has never had a high profile in the anti-abortion movement, but he developed and promoted the legal approach that has flummoxed the courts and enraged abortion rights supporters.

Jonathan F. Mitchell grew increasingly dismayed as he read the Supreme Court’s decision in June 2016 striking down major portions of a Texas anti-abortion bill he had helped write.

Not only had the court gutted the legislation, which Mr. Mitchell had quietly worked on a few years earlier as the Texas state government’s top appeals court lawyer, but it also had called out his attempt to structure the law in a way that would prevent judicial action to block it, essentially saying: nice try.

“We reject Texas’ invitation to pave the way for legislatures to immunize their statutes” from a general review of their constitutionality, Justice Stephen G. Breyer wrote in the majority’s opinion.

For Mr. Mitchell, a onetime clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia, the decision was a stinging rebuke, and he vowed that if he ever had the chance to help develop another anti-abortion law, he would ensure it survived at the Supreme Court.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/12/us/politics/texas-abortion-lawyer-jonathan-mitchell.html

September 12, 2021

Former WGN anchor Allison Payne dead at 57: 'She was proud of excellence'

Allison Payne, a nine-time Emmy Award winner was the face of WGN-TV for two decades.

Allison Payne, a nine-time Emmy Award winner who was the face of WGN-TV for two decades and inspired a generation of Black women reporters, died Sept. 1 in her hometown of Detroit, the television station reported. She was 57.

Payne made Chicago her home in 1990 after WGN hired her when she was 25.

“Allison was young, vibrant, sharp,” meteorologist Tom Skilling recalled in a WGN video tribute. “You looked at Alison, you thought here’s a young journalist who has the world before her, and one could only speculate where that incredible career was going to go.”

Payne became a reporting powerhouse for WGN, covering everything from politics to sports. Her stories took her all around the world.

https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/9/11/22668558/allison-payne-dies-obituary-wgn-chicago-tv-news-anchor

September 12, 2021

Texas Governor Greg Abbott Pulls Ahead in Race to Determine Biggest GOP Asshole

Abbott has declared he’ll defend Texans’ “right to choose” not to get vaccinated, after signing a law effectively banning abortion.

There’s immense competition these days, but on Thursday, Texas governor Greg Abbott pulled ahead of the pack in the race to determine the biggest asshole in the Republican Party. In the same month that he signed a law disenfranchising countless constituents, and another law went into effect essentially banning abortion in his state, Abbott had the temerity, unique among conservatives, to announce that he would do everything in his power to defend Texans’ “right to choose.” Not to choose to end a pregnancy, of course, because in Texas pregnant people have no rights, but rather to choose not to get a lifesaving vaccine and help end the COVID-19 pandemic, now in its 18th month.

In response to Joe Biden’s announcement that, among other things, his administration would require all businesses with more than 100 employees to either require vaccinations for all workers or mandate weekly coronavirus tests—a move designed, per the White House, to “ensure that we are using every available tool to combat COVID-19 and save even more lives in the months ahead, while also keeping schools open and safe, and protecting our economy from lockdowns and damage”—Abbott took to Twitter to declare that such an outrageous attempt to keep people and the economy alive would not go down on his watch.

“Biden’s vaccine mandate is an assault on private businesses,” Abbott tweeted. “I issued an Executive Order protecting Texans’ right to choose whether they get the COVID vaccine & added it to the special session agenda. Texas is already working to halt this power grab.”

Obviously, the hypocrisy of claiming to be all about “protecting Texans’ right to choose,” after signing a law that would, among other things, force a rape victim to have her attacker’s child (if she misses what is effectively a two-week window offered to her by the state to make her own choices), was too great to let slide—and the Twitter reaction was swift:

https://twitter.com/IlhanMN/status/1436110586539089923
https://twitter.com/TheRickyDavila/status/1436167832526417948
https://twitter.com/BMeiselas/status/1436145387715248182
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/09/greg-abbott-vaccines-abortion-hypocrisy

Abbott may be in the lead this week, but DeSantis and Cruz aren't going to concede that easily.

September 10, 2021

For now, DeSantis order on school masks will stand, appeal court rules

Source: Tampa Bay Times

The decision means the state can continue to punish school officials who impose strict mask mandates.

TALLAHASSEE — Gov. Ron DeSantis and his administration won approval on Friday to put a hold on a Leon County judge’s ruling that said the state could not enforce a ban on strict mask mandates in schools.

The 1st District Court of Appeal agreed to a state request to reinstate a stay on Judge John Cooper’s ruling amid objections from a group of parents who said the move could cause “irreparable harm” to their children amid a rise of COVID-19 cases.

The decision means the state can continue to punish school officials who impose mask mandates without a parent opt-out.

Cooper ruled last month that the state could not penalize districts that impose strict mask mandates if they demonstrate the policy is “reasonable” and necessary to achieve a “compelling state interest.”

Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2021/09/10/for-now-desantis-order-on-school-masks-will-stand-appeal-court-rules/