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babylonsister
babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
October 16, 2021
Florida Withholds Entire School Board’s Salaries in Feud Over Mask Mandate
NO MASK OR NO CASH
Blake Montgomery
Reporter/Editor
Published Oct. 15, 2021 10:36PM ET
Joe Skipper/Reuters
Florida Withholds Entire School Board's Salaries in Feud Over Mask Mandate
https://www.thedailybeast.com/leon-county-school-board-salaries-withheld-in-feud-with-education-commissioner-over-mask-mandateFlorida Withholds Entire School Board’s Salaries in Feud Over Mask Mandate
NO MASK OR NO CASH
Blake Montgomery
Reporter/Editor
Published Oct. 15, 2021 10:36PM ET
Joe Skipper/Reuters
The head of Florida’s education system withheld the salaries of an entire school board Friday over a northern district’s mask mandate, which had already been relaxed at his request, but not enough for his taste. Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran took issue with the Leon County School Board’s stipulation that asymptomatic students who would otherwise be confined to a seven-day quarantine must wear masks to school, regardless of their parents’ wishes. Under Leon County rules introduced after Florida demanded mask mandates be revoked, parents can opt their children out of donning a mask in most cases. Alva Swafford Striplin, a member of the board, wrote on Facebook, “Lost my salary today. But today was a big day in the Smith-Striplin household so I will focus on the good! Rates are down in our community significantly, our schools are open, and our children are learning and laughing in-person with their friends.”
October 16, 2021
Fully Vaccinated 21-Year-Old Student Dies of COVID-19
Sad and scary-young, in shape, vaxxed, still dead. 
https://www.thedailybeast.com/fully-vaccinated-21-year-old-university-of-georgia-student-shawn-kuhn-dies-of-covid-19
Fully Vaccinated 21-Year-Old Student Dies of COVID-19
HEARTBREAKING
Blake Montgomery
Reporter/Editor
Published Oct. 15, 2021 7:48PM ET
A 21-year-old student whose family said he had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 died of the respiratory infection Monday. Shawn Kuhn was a senior studying exercise and sports science at the University of Georgia, where he had made the Dean’s List. His older sister, Sharla Brook, told The Red & Black, the school’s paper, that her brother had been inoculated against the coronavirus but that he still spent six weeks fighting pneumonia brought on by COVID-19. His father Timothy wrote on Facebook, “You were everything your mother and I could have ever asked for and so much more… Just know that your mother and I love you more than you could ever imagine and we could not be any more proud of the man you grew to be.”
October 15, 2021
Ron DeSantis Is “Offended” by Biden’s Attempt to Prevent Americans From Dying a Miserable, Preventable Death
The Florida governor plans to sue the Biden administration over their vaccine mandates, which would, y’know, actually help end the pandemic.
By Bess Levin
October 15, 2021
snip//
Like most Republican governors—whose states already require multiple doses of various vaccines for people to take part in the rituals of regular life—DeSantis is absolutely incensed by Joe Biden’s vaccine requirements. Despite the fact that Florida has recorded at least 3,617,649 confirmed COVID cases and 57,711 deaths since last year, and, according to the Miami Herald’s review of CDC data, logged an average of 186 deaths and 2,845 cases per day this week, DeSantis believes the best use of his time is to bitch and moan about how mean the president is being and to sue for Floridians to have the right to die an easily preventable death.
Per Politico:
DeSantis said on Thursday that the suits against federal vaccine mandates will be filed in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He also made a big show pretending to care deeply about the livelihoods of the people whose actual lives are less important to him than politics. “Let’s not have Biden come in and effectively take away—threaten to take away—the jobs of people who have been working hard throughout this entire pandemic,” DeSantis said during a news conference. “I am offended that a police officer could potentially lose their job.”
DeSantis Is "Offended" by Biden's Attempt to Prevent Americans From Dying a Miserable, Preventable D
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/ron-desantis-vaccine-mandate-lawsuitRon DeSantis Is “Offended” by Biden’s Attempt to Prevent Americans From Dying a Miserable, Preventable Death
The Florida governor plans to sue the Biden administration over their vaccine mandates, which would, y’know, actually help end the pandemic.
By Bess Levin
October 15, 2021
snip//
Like most Republican governors—whose states already require multiple doses of various vaccines for people to take part in the rituals of regular life—DeSantis is absolutely incensed by Joe Biden’s vaccine requirements. Despite the fact that Florida has recorded at least 3,617,649 confirmed COVID cases and 57,711 deaths since last year, and, according to the Miami Herald’s review of CDC data, logged an average of 186 deaths and 2,845 cases per day this week, DeSantis believes the best use of his time is to bitch and moan about how mean the president is being and to sue for Floridians to have the right to die an easily preventable death.
Per Politico:
Gov. Ron DeSantis has opened a multimillion-dollar battle against vaccine mandates, and on Thursday took the fight to the Biden administration. The GOP governor said Florida will challenge in federal court and through legislation any vaccine mandates placed on employers or others by President Joe Biden. DeSantis’s comments follow those of Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who earlier this week banned vaccine requirements in his state.
DeSantis has consistently rejected COVID-related restrictions, including vaccine passports, mask mandates, and lockdowns. He has continued a months-long dispute with school districts that defied his order against mask mandates, including docking the salaries of school officials who implement mask requirements without an opt-out policy for parents. That fight has also brought in the Biden administration, which has provided more than $500,000 in financial assistance to school officials.
Florida over the summer was a hotbed for new infections as the delta variant spread through the state. At one point, the state made up about 1 in 5 new coronavirus infections in the nation. Before the summer surge, Florida had the nation’s 27th highest COVID-19 death rate; afterward, the state’s death rate climbed to 10th highest, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
DeSantis has consistently rejected COVID-related restrictions, including vaccine passports, mask mandates, and lockdowns. He has continued a months-long dispute with school districts that defied his order against mask mandates, including docking the salaries of school officials who implement mask requirements without an opt-out policy for parents. That fight has also brought in the Biden administration, which has provided more than $500,000 in financial assistance to school officials.
Florida over the summer was a hotbed for new infections as the delta variant spread through the state. At one point, the state made up about 1 in 5 new coronavirus infections in the nation. Before the summer surge, Florida had the nation’s 27th highest COVID-19 death rate; afterward, the state’s death rate climbed to 10th highest, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
DeSantis said on Thursday that the suits against federal vaccine mandates will be filed in the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He also made a big show pretending to care deeply about the livelihoods of the people whose actual lives are less important to him than politics. “Let’s not have Biden come in and effectively take away—threaten to take away—the jobs of people who have been working hard throughout this entire pandemic,” DeSantis said during a news conference. “I am offended that a police officer could potentially lose their job.”
October 15, 2021
https://www.thedailybeast.com/carroll-school-district-backtracks-says-there-are-not-two-sides-to-holocaust?ref=home
Texas School District Backtracks: There Are ‘Not Two Sides’ to Holocaust
‘TERRIBLE EVENT’
Corbin Bolies
Breaking News Intern
Updated Oct. 15, 2021 3:14PM ET /
Published Oct. 15, 2021 10:53AM ET
Damir Sencar/AFP via Getty
Texas School District Backtracks: There Are 'Not Two Sides' to Holocaust
https://www.thedailybeast.com/carroll-school-district-backtracks-says-there-are-not-two-sides-to-holocaust?ref=home
Texas School District Backtracks: There Are ‘Not Two Sides’ to Holocaust
‘TERRIBLE EVENT’
Corbin Bolies
Breaking News Intern
Updated Oct. 15, 2021 3:14PM ET /
Published Oct. 15, 2021 10:53AM ET
Damir Sencar/AFP via Getty
A Texas school district attempted to walk back a scandal late Thursday after teachers were told in a meeting to present “both sides” of the Holocaust. “During the conversations with teachers during last week’s meeting, the comments made were in no way to convey that the Holocaust was anything less than a terrible event in history,” Carroll Superintendent Lane Ledbetter wrote on Facebook. “Additionally, we recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust.” The meeting, led by the Southlake, Texas, district’s head of curriculum, had urged teachers to conform with Texas House Bill 3979, which requires teachers to balance out “widely debated and currently controversial issues” with a both-sides approach.
“As we continue to work through implementation of HB3979, we also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts,” Ledbetter wrote. “As a district we will work to add clarity to our expectations for teachers and once again apologize for any hurt or confusion this has caused.”
“As we continue to work through implementation of HB3979, we also understand this bill does not require an opposing viewpoint on historical facts,” Ledbetter wrote. “As a district we will work to add clarity to our expectations for teachers and once again apologize for any hurt or confusion this has caused.”
October 15, 2021
Letter from Biden’s Washington
The Trump Presidency Is Still an Active Crime Scene
It’s hard to consign the Trump years to the history books when we remain in the middle of the crisis that it sparked.
By Susan B. Glasser
October 14, 2021
snip//
The bottom line is that the story of the Trump Presidency still has important unanswered questions that the forthcoming pile of books cannot answer. And they have an urgency about them that unanswered questions about past Administrations usually don’t, given the ongoing threat to our democracy: Trump is not only preparing to run again but is determined to mold the G.O.P. into a single-issue Party, the ideology of which consists solely of disputing the legitimacy of the election that turned him out of office. The Trump Presidency is not yet, alas, simply a matter for booksellers and book writers; it’s an active crime scene.
Several of the more interesting new books come from participants in one of Congress’s earlier efforts to investigate and hold Trump accountable—his first impeachment, in 2019, for withholding several hundred million dollars in security assistance to Ukraine to force its President to conduct politically motivated investigations of Joe Biden and the 2016 election. Two of the trial’s witnesses, Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill, recently released memoirs that cover their roles in Trump’s National Security Council—which led them to unexpected public fame, given that Trump tried to stop their testimony. Hill’s book, “There Is Nothing for You Here,” is one of the most compelling to emerge from inside the Trump White House. She observes, at first hand, how Trump’s “autocrat envy” led not only to open admiration of anti-democratic figures such as Vladimir Putin and Victor Orbán but to Trump’s adoption of their anti-democratic agenda inside America.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, released his contribution to the Trump bookshelf this week, “Midnight in Washington,” the title of which comes from one of the many eloquent speeches that Schiff made during the first impeachment trial. In the proceedings, he presciently warned that a failure to convict and remove Trump from office would result in even worse abuses. His book ends with a new warning embedded in the subtitle: “How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.” The Washington Post, in its review, called it a “500-page closing statement on an era that has not yet closed.”
Schiff’s book is a valuable part of the historical record in part because it details how Democrats pursued impeachment—why they ruled out a broader set of charges, for example, and how they had to quickly investigate the Ukraine matter on their own, something that traditionally would have been handled by an independent prosecutor. But the main takeaway from the book, and the entire experience of the past few years, is that Congress, with one chamber controlled by Democrats and the other by Republicans who were unified in Trump’s defense, is not set up to investigate a rogue President like Trump—a disconcerting fact, considering the challenges still posed by the ongoing Trump crisis.
Throughout his Presidency, Trump and his aides flouted congressional subpoenas and demands for information; he is once again instructing them to do so with the January 6th investigation, even though he is out of office and it is unclear if any executive privilege would still apply. Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, is now a member of the January 6th select committee. The test, once again, he told me, is whether and how Congress can find a way of “enforcing the rule of law” and its own subpoenas. It is a great crisis, he said, if “a coequal branch of government cannot get the information it needs, both to legislate and to keep an Administration from becoming corrupt.” This is no wonky procedural matter but a test of American democracy’s ability to self-correct. The true history of the Trump Administration can’t be written without it.
The Trump Presidency Is Still an Active Crime Scene
https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/the-trump-presidency-is-still-an-active-crime-sceneLetter from Biden’s Washington
The Trump Presidency Is Still an Active Crime Scene
It’s hard to consign the Trump years to the history books when we remain in the middle of the crisis that it sparked.
By Susan B. Glasser
October 14, 2021
snip//
The bottom line is that the story of the Trump Presidency still has important unanswered questions that the forthcoming pile of books cannot answer. And they have an urgency about them that unanswered questions about past Administrations usually don’t, given the ongoing threat to our democracy: Trump is not only preparing to run again but is determined to mold the G.O.P. into a single-issue Party, the ideology of which consists solely of disputing the legitimacy of the election that turned him out of office. The Trump Presidency is not yet, alas, simply a matter for booksellers and book writers; it’s an active crime scene.
Several of the more interesting new books come from participants in one of Congress’s earlier efforts to investigate and hold Trump accountable—his first impeachment, in 2019, for withholding several hundred million dollars in security assistance to Ukraine to force its President to conduct politically motivated investigations of Joe Biden and the 2016 election. Two of the trial’s witnesses, Alexander Vindman and Fiona Hill, recently released memoirs that cover their roles in Trump’s National Security Council—which led them to unexpected public fame, given that Trump tried to stop their testimony. Hill’s book, “There Is Nothing for You Here,” is one of the most compelling to emerge from inside the Trump White House. She observes, at first hand, how Trump’s “autocrat envy” led not only to open admiration of anti-democratic figures such as Vladimir Putin and Victor Orbán but to Trump’s adoption of their anti-democratic agenda inside America.
The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and the lead impeachment manager, Adam Schiff, released his contribution to the Trump bookshelf this week, “Midnight in Washington,” the title of which comes from one of the many eloquent speeches that Schiff made during the first impeachment trial. In the proceedings, he presciently warned that a failure to convict and remove Trump from office would result in even worse abuses. His book ends with a new warning embedded in the subtitle: “How We Almost Lost Our Democracy and Still Could.” The Washington Post, in its review, called it a “500-page closing statement on an era that has not yet closed.”
Schiff’s book is a valuable part of the historical record in part because it details how Democrats pursued impeachment—why they ruled out a broader set of charges, for example, and how they had to quickly investigate the Ukraine matter on their own, something that traditionally would have been handled by an independent prosecutor. But the main takeaway from the book, and the entire experience of the past few years, is that Congress, with one chamber controlled by Democrats and the other by Republicans who were unified in Trump’s defense, is not set up to investigate a rogue President like Trump—a disconcerting fact, considering the challenges still posed by the ongoing Trump crisis.
Throughout his Presidency, Trump and his aides flouted congressional subpoenas and demands for information; he is once again instructing them to do so with the January 6th investigation, even though he is out of office and it is unclear if any executive privilege would still apply. Schiff, a former federal prosecutor, is now a member of the January 6th select committee. The test, once again, he told me, is whether and how Congress can find a way of “enforcing the rule of law” and its own subpoenas. It is a great crisis, he said, if “a coequal branch of government cannot get the information it needs, both to legislate and to keep an Administration from becoming corrupt.” This is no wonky procedural matter but a test of American democracy’s ability to self-correct. The true history of the Trump Administration can’t be written without it.
October 15, 2021
10/15/21 4:51am
Anti-Vax Flat Earth Preacher Rob Skiba Dies From COVID-19
"The one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead," Skiba posted to Facebook to those getting vaccinated.
By Ed Scarce
Skiba was calling vaccine mandates the "mark of the beast" from Revelations way back in 2012. He thought COVID-19 vaccinations were dangerous, posting on Facebook, "To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote.
Rob Skiba made a really bad bet.
Source: The Daily Beast
His Facebook post.
The man truly was a prophet.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1448478597107404802
Anti-Vax Flat Earth Preacher Rob Skiba Dies From COVID-19
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/10/anti-vax-flat-earth-preacher-rob-skiba10/15/21 4:51am
Anti-Vax Flat Earth Preacher Rob Skiba Dies From COVID-19
"The one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead," Skiba posted to Facebook to those getting vaccinated.
By Ed Scarce
Skiba was calling vaccine mandates the "mark of the beast" from Revelations way back in 2012. He thought COVID-19 vaccinations were dangerous, posting on Facebook, "To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote.
Rob Skiba made a really bad bet.
Source: The Daily Beast
Rob Skiba, an influential figure in flat earth and Christian circles, has died of COVID-19, colleagues announced on Thursday. He had been fighting the virus since at least late August, when he began exhibiting symptoms after “Take On The World,” a biblical flat earth conference. “He has been sick since coming back from TOTW,” a Facebook friend posted in early September, adding that Skiba had been hospitalized for low oxygen levels. One of the country’s most prominent advocates of Flat Earth Theory, Skiba was also skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines and some of the illness’ treatments. On the first day of the Take On The World conference, Skiba authored a Facebook post suggesting that the COVID-19 vaccines were dangerous.
‘To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote. “Unless YHWH miraculously intervenes, based on what I’m seeing/hearing, the one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead. Truly, I take no joy in saying this, nor will I if I'm the one still standing.”
‘To those who disagree with my position on our current situation... One of us is right,” he wrote. “Unless YHWH miraculously intervenes, based on what I’m seeing/hearing, the one scenario that really does appear to be coming into focus is the likelihood that within I’d say 2 to 3 years or so... one of us will probably be dead. Truly, I take no joy in saying this, nor will I if I'm the one still standing.”
His Facebook post.
The man truly was a prophet.
https://twitter.com/i/status/1448478597107404802
October 15, 2021
He doth protesteth too much.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-yells-im-not-into-golden-showers-at-elite-gop-donors?ref=home
Trump Yells at Elite GOP Donors: I’m Not Into Golden Showers
NO ONE ASKED
Jamie Ross
News Correspondent
Published Oct. 15, 2021 7:02AM ET
Reuters/Octavio Jones
Trump Yells at Elite GOP Donors: I'm Not Into Golden Showers
He doth protesteth too much.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-yells-im-not-into-golden-showers-at-elite-gop-donors?ref=home
Trump Yells at Elite GOP Donors: I’m Not Into Golden Showers
NO ONE ASKED
Jamie Ross
News Correspondent
Published Oct. 15, 2021 7:02AM ET
Reuters/Octavio Jones
Elite Republican donors and lobbyists gathered for an exclusive retreat in Palm Beach on Thursday to work out how they’re going to fight back from last year’s humbling presidential election loss. For some reason, Donald Trump told them that he doesn’t like being peed on. According to The Washington Post, top GOP operatives and U.S. senators were in attendance for Trump’s speech at the National Republican Senatorial Committee where he lauded himself as the savior of the party. “It was a dying party, I’ll be honest. Now we have a very lively party,” he told them, before going on an inevitable rant about election conspiracy theories. However, in a bizarre and unprompted tangent, he addressed unsubstantiated claims about what he did with prostitutes in Moscow before his presidency. “I’m not into golden showers,” he reportedly told the crowd. “You know the great thing, our great first lady—‘That one,’ she said, ‘I don’t believe that one.’” Unfortunately, Trump did not expand on the implication that his wife does believe some of the other allegations against him.
October 15, 2021
Fired FBI official Andrew McCabe wins retirement benefits and back pay in settlement
Updated October 14, 20216:40 PM ET
Carrie Johnson
The Justice Department has agreed to restore full law enforcement benefits and provide some attorney fees for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the Trump administration only hours before his retirement three years ago.
The settlement will resolve a civil lawsuit filed by McCabe, who argued that his ouster was the result of a "years-long public vendetta" driven by the former president.
The Justice Department demoted and then dismissed him on the eve of his 50th birthday in March 2018, when his FBI annuity would have vested.
more...
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1039690679/andrew-mccabe-lawsuit-trump-fbi
Fired FBI official Andrew McCabe wins retirement benefits and back pay in settlement
Fired FBI official Andrew McCabe wins retirement benefits and back pay in settlement
Updated October 14, 20216:40 PM ET
Carrie Johnson
The Justice Department has agreed to restore full law enforcement benefits and provide some attorney fees for former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by the Trump administration only hours before his retirement three years ago.
The settlement will resolve a civil lawsuit filed by McCabe, who argued that his ouster was the result of a "years-long public vendetta" driven by the former president.
The Justice Department demoted and then dismissed him on the eve of his 50th birthday in March 2018, when his FBI annuity would have vested.
"I think the message that you get loud and clear from the terms of the settlement is that this never should have happened," McCabe said. "It feels like complete vindication, because that's what it is."
more...
https://www.npr.org/2021/10/14/1039690679/andrew-mccabe-lawsuit-trump-fbi
October 14, 2021
US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump exit
By Laura Kelly - 10/14/21 02:22 PM EDT
The U.S. on Thursday was elected to serve on the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning next year, rejoining the highly scrutinized international committee after leaving it in 2018 under then-President Trump.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the move, saying the council plays a “meaningful role” in protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, but suffers from “serious flaws,” including disproportionate focus on condemning Israel.
The secretary had announced in February that the U.S. would return to the council as an observer, part of President Biden’s push to reengage on the global stage in general and among international forums, in particular.
more...
https://thehill.com/policy/international/576797-us-rejoins-un-human-rights-council-reversing-trump-exit
US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump exit
US rejoins UN Human Rights Council, reversing Trump exit
By Laura Kelly - 10/14/21 02:22 PM EDT
The U.S. on Thursday was elected to serve on the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning next year, rejoining the highly scrutinized international committee after leaving it in 2018 under then-President Trump.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the move, saying the council plays a “meaningful role” in protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms, but suffers from “serious flaws,” including disproportionate focus on condemning Israel.
“Together, we must push back against attempts to subvert the ideals upon which the Human Rights Council was founded, including that each person is endowed with human rights and that states are obliged to protect those rights,” Blinken said in a statement.
The secretary had announced in February that the U.S. would return to the council as an observer, part of President Biden’s push to reengage on the global stage in general and among international forums, in particular.
more...
https://thehill.com/policy/international/576797-us-rejoins-un-human-rights-council-reversing-trump-exit
October 14, 2021
Meteorite Crashes Into Canadian Woman's Bedroom, Missing Her by Inches
Aw, jeeze, now we have to worry about these?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/meteorite-crashes-into-canadian-womans-bedroom-missing-her-by-inches?ref=home
Meteorite Crashes Into Canadian Woman’s Bedroom, Missing Her by Inches
RISE AND SHINE!
Kana Ruhalter
Breaking News Intern
Published Oct. 14, 2021 12:53PM ET
A Canadian woman got the shock of a lifetime when she was woken up in the middle of the night by a meteorite crashing through her bedroom ceiling and landing mere inches from her face, reports the Vancouver Sun. Ruth Hamilton luckily had no physical injuries aside from some debris on her face. “I’ve never been so scared in my life,” said the Golden, British Columbia, resident. Hamilton called the police, and they initially thought the rubble was from a local construction site, before determining it was part of a meteor shower hours earlier. “The odds of that happening are so small, so I’m pretty grateful to be alive,” she said. Hamilton added that she plans on keeping the rock that nearly killed her.
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