Zorro
Zorro's JournalTrump Reveals His Master Plan for Afghanistan: We Should've 'Let It Rot'
In his latest interview, the former president repeatedly failed to explain what he would have done differently if he had remained in charge.Donald Trump has had a lot to say about how Joe Biden has mishandled the withdrawal from Afghanistan—but, when given the chance to explain what he would have done differently, Trump’s master plan boiled down to leaving the country in smouldering ruins before leaving it forever.
The ex-president appeared on Fox Business on Tuesday morning to get some things off his chest a day after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan. During a curious rant about how he believes unnamed shadowy forces are controlling Biden, Trump shared his alternative withdrawal plans.
“It’s something that’s rather incredible,” he said. “They [the people supposedly controlling Biden] do horrible things, vicious things. They cheat, steal, lie. But they can’t do a simple withdrawal from a country that we should never have gone into in the first place... We should have hit that country years ago, hit it them really hard, and then let it rot.”
The former president was repeatedly thrown softball questions about how he would’ve handled the situation if he hadn’t lost the election. However, he repeatedly failed to give any answers of substance, merely saying that he would’ve won the war in Afghanistan if only he’d had a few more months.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-reveals-his-master-plan-for-afghanistan
The Point Is That People in the South Are Suffering
NASHVILLE — By now you’ve probably seen photos of the apocalyptic flooding in Middle Tennessee’s Dickson, Hickman, Houston and Humphreys Counties on Aug. 21, though it’s understandable if you scrolled right on past without really looking. There’s a déjà vu quality to such images. Cars lifted by some unstoppable force and returned to earth cattywampus. Houses at odds with their foundations, or just gone. Holes where roads used to be. The debris field of a bombing.
At least 20 people died in Middle Tennessee, and entire communities were wrecked beyond all recognition. If you let yourself think about the survivors, the pictures will break your heart.
“These are people we know. These are people’s families that we know,” Sheriff Chris Davis of Humphreys County told WPLN’s Damon Mitchell. “These are people that we grew up with.” The places that were nearly flattened by the flooding are small towns, or close-knit communities that can’t rightly be called towns, and nearly every family there is broken by loss. Many people lost everything they own.
If the pictures break your heart, it’s the stories that will kill you. The teenagers who went outside to take pictures and then watched as one of their own was carried away by a wall of water that came out of nowhere. The father trying to hold on to infant twins, or the mother trying to hold on to her toddler, powerless when the muddy water claimed them anyway. People frantically trying to help their neighbors, too many of them losing their lives in the process.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/30/opinion/tennessee-natural-disasters-climate-change.html
Florida penalizes Alachua, Broward school districts in mask standoffs
Source: Tampa Bay Times
The announcement Monday came after Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper on Friday ruled that Gov. Ron DeSantis’ overstepped his constitutional authority in prohibiting mask mandates.
TALLAHASSEE — Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran announced Monday that the state Department of Education has withheld funds from the Alachua and Broward county school districts in amounts equal to school board members’ monthly salaries.
The move was a penalty for the school boards requiring students to wear masks during the COVID-19 pandemic, with exceptions only for students whose parents submit doctors’ notes. Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order July 30 that sought to prohibit local school districts from enacting student mask mandates.
The governor’s order triggered a Department of Health rule that said parents must be able to opt out of such mandates. On Aug. 20, the Department of Education issued orders threatening to withhold funding equal to the salaries of four Alachua board members and eight Broward board members who voted for the mandates.
Corcoran’s announcement Monday came after Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper on Friday ruled that DeSantis’ overstepped his constitutional authority in issuing the executive order.
Read more: https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/08/30/florida-penalizes-alachua-broward-school-districts-in-mask-standoffs/
Families line up outside chiropractor's office to get exemption forms for school mask mandate
SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — Families were lined up outside a chiropractor’s office in Venice on Monday night hoping to get medical exemption forms for their children in response to Sarasota County’s new school mask mandate.
The mask mandate in Sarasota County schools went into effect on Monday and, while the district says compliance so far has been good, they are dealing with a few challenges vetting medical exemption forms. As the district works through the exemptions to make sure they’re valid and correct, some parents are voicing concerns over the local chiropractor, who confirms to 8 On Your Side he’s signed dozens of exemption forms in the past week.
Paulina Testerman says she was in disbelief when she heard claims that Twin Palms Chiropractic was offering up mask exemptions to anyone who wanted one. Her family went to check things out for themselves.
“We were in and out, came in, signed a clipboard and handed a sheet,” Testerman said. “Nobody asked to see our children. The forms were pre-signed, there was a stack behind the counter and they were just passed out.”
District officials say they’re aware of the situation and are concerned about the claims they’re seeing online.
https://www.wfla.com/news/sarasota-county/venice-chiropractor-signs-dozens-of-medical-exemption-forms-as-sarasota-school-mask-mandate-goes-in-effect/
Doesn't seem like the kind of publicity a chiropractor's office would like to have.
Finding election fraud where the Cyber Ninjas failed
Perhaps they were too busy examining ballots for bamboo shoots to see where the voter illegality really was.
Turns out, it was smack dab under their Cyber Ninja noses, and yet somehow they failed to slink in and discover that Arizona audit moneyman Patrick Byrne had illegally registered to vote in Park City, Utah.
Yes, of all the ironies, it appears Byrne, who went from Overstock to laughingstock for bankrolling the ambiguous Sarasota computer security company to find election fraud in Maricopa County, Az., violated Utah state statute by listing his place of business as his legal residence on his form.
And as any self-respecting ninja worth his weight in bamboo ballots will tell you, and state election officials will probably confirm, that’s kind of a no-no if true. The records seem to say it is.
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2021/08/29/ovserstock-com-ceo-patrick-byrnes-illegal-voting-form-and-cyber-ninjas/5599053001/
Parents plan protests over Sarasota mask mandate
On Monday morning, students at Sarasota County Schools will be expected to mask up or head home, unless they have a note signed by a doctor.
The new rule has plenty of fans, as COVID-19 cases continue to spike in schools.
But it has also generated an organized and vocal backlash among parents, some of whom are planning to show up at their child's school on Monday to protest, and others who will be sending their child to school without a mask or a medical exemption, simply claiming to opt out of the new mandate.
“The goal is to not comply,” said Amy Cook, a mom who led an effort to sue the school district over its mask mandate last school year. “They will have forms that say if you touch my child you’ll have a lawsuit on your hands.”
https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/2021/08/29/sarasota-moms-mobilize-protest-mask-mandate/5618570001/
DeSantis Locks Down Florida After Spread Of Covid Vaccination Gets Out Of Hand
TALLAHASSEE, FL—Urging residents to stay in their homes and away from medical facilities, Governor Ron DeSantis locked down Florida Friday after the spread of Covid vaccinations got out of hand.
“With inoculation numbers skyrocketing across the Sunshine State, I have been forced the take the extreme measure of locking Florida down to combat the vaccine spread,” said DeSantis, explaining that until CDC data shows a sustained drop in the vaccination rate, all pharmacies and clinics would be mandated to close.
“I cannot stress enough the importance of wearing bicep coverings to protect yourself from Covid vaccines. Because if gone unchecked, the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine variants could end up saving the lives of thousands of Floridians. So, please be on your guard.”
At press time, DeSantis was encouraged by new evidence confirming that Florida’s life expectancy was steadily dropping.
https://www.theonion.com/desantis-locks-down-florida-after-spread-of-covid-vacci-1847572019
It's the Onion, folks...
Tampa Bay schools see 10,000 COVID cases three weeks into the new year
The surge of COVID-19 cases that ushered in the new school year has quickened dramatically.
Public school systems in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties reported 5,334 cases of the virus this past week among students and staff — far outpacing the 2,153 cases they reported the previous week.
By Friday, the number of cases among the four districts totaled 10,387 since classes began on Aug. 10 and 11. Last school year, it took until Feb. 20 to reach that number.
The load is testing school districts’ ability to keep their data current. Officials in Hillsborough and Pinellas have been told that their local health departments have limited resources, leaving school district employees to do much of the work of logging cases and arranging quarantines.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2021/08/28/tampa-bay-schools-see-10000-covid-cases-three-weeks-into-the-new-year/
40 Million People Rely on the Colorado River. It's Drying Up Fast.
On a 110-degree day several years ago, surrounded by piles of sand and rock in the desert outside of Las Vegas, I stepped into a yellow cage large enough to fit three standing adults and was lowered 600 feet through a black hole into the ground. There, at the bottom, amid pooling water and dripping rock, was an enormous machine driving a cone-shaped drill bit into the earth. The machine was carving a cavernous, 3-mile tunnel beneath the bottom of the nation’s largest freshwater reservoir, Lake Mead.
Lake Mead, a reservoir formed by the construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, is one of the most important pieces of infrastructure on the Colorado River, supplying fresh water to Nevada, California, Arizona and Mexico. The reservoir hasn’t been full since 1983. In 2000, it began a steady decline caused by epochal drought. On my visit in 2015, the lake was just about 40% full. A chalky ring on the surrounding cliffs marked where the waterline once reached, like the residue on an empty bathtub. The tunnel far below represented Nevada’s latest salvo in a simmering water war: the construction of a $1.4 billion drainage hole to ensure that if the lake ever ran dry, Las Vegas could get the very last drop.
For years, experts in the American West have predicted that, unless the steady overuse of water was brought under control, the Colorado River would no longer be able to support all of the 40 million people who depend on it. Over the past two decades, Western states took incremental steps to save water, signed agreements to share what was left and then, like Las Vegas, did what they could to protect themselves. But they believed the tipping point was still a long way off.
Like the record-breaking heat waves and the ceaseless mega-fires, the decline of the Colorado River has been faster than expected. This year, even though rainfall and snowpack high up in the Rocky Mountains were at near-normal levels, the parched soils and plants stricken by intense heat absorbed much of the water, and inflows to Lake Powell were around one-fourth of their usual amount. The Colorado’s flow has already declined by nearly 20%, on average, from its flow throughout the 1900s, and if the current rate of warming continues, the loss could well be 50% by the end of this century.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/40-million-people-rely-on-the-colorado-river-its-drying-up-fast
Doctor advising DeSantis promoted ivermectin to treat COVID-19 despite FDA warnings
“Any physician that espouses this should be reported to the state medical association,” one medical expert said.A California psychiatrist who has advised Gov. Ron DeSantis on the coronavirus pandemic recently promoted a drug for COVID-19 patients that federal disease experts have strongly warned against after a spike in calls to poison control centers.
The surge of interest in the parasite drug, ivermectin, prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Thursday to issue a national alert advising against its use to treat coronavirus. The maker of the drug, Merck, has also said there is “no scientific basis” to claim that ivermectin is effective against COVID-19.
Dr. Mark McDonald of Los Angeles is among a fringe group of outspoken medical professionals who have pushed ivermectin as an alternative to widespread vaccination against coronavirus. McDonald called ivermectin “effective, safe, inexpensive treatment” in a Aug. 5 Twitter post, and he shared an article by the Jerusalem Post citing a recent study of the drug in Israel.
A wave of online misinformation about ivermectin has led to increased demand, and some people have turned to a version of the drug meant for farm animals. That sparked the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to tweet: “You are not a horse. You are not a cow. Seriously, y’all. Stop it.”
https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/08/28/doctor-advising-desantis-promoted-ivermectin-to-treat-covid-19-despite-fda-warnings/
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