August 26, 2021

'Unwinnable war' against COVID-19 leads thousands of burned-out Mississippi nurses to resign in 2021

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/8/26/2048397/--Unwinnable-war-against-COVID-19-leads-thousands-of-burned-out-Mississippi-nurses-to-resign-in-2021

‘Unwinnable war’ against COVID-19 leads thousands of burned-out Mississippi nurses to resign in 2021
Aysha Qamar
Daily Kos Staff
Thursday August 26, 2021 · 5:28 PM EDT
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As hospitals nationwide struggle again due to a rise in hospitalizations due to the delta variant, reports of staff shortages increase. As unvaccinated individuals continue to fill hospitals and fight with health care professionals, exhaustion and lack of support have left health care workers struggling with their own problems. In Mississippi, as the state battles some of the highest numbers of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 residents in the nation, nurses are resigning due to extreme burnout. At least 2,000 Mississippi nurses have resigned since the beginning of the year, according to the Mississippi Hospital Association's Center for Quality & Workforce.



The nurse shortage comes as the state once again set a new record Tuesday for COVID-19 cases in a single day. At a news conference on Tuesday, State Epidemiologist Dr. Paul Byers said Mississippi set a new record for COVID-19 deaths in one day—over 100 deaths were reported. Additionally, of the 875 staffed ICU beds across the state, more than 93% are in use, and COVID-19 patients occupy more than 63% of those beds, data from the US Department of Health and Human Service found.

The increase comes within days of Mississippi surpassing its then highest average since the beginning of the pandemic, with more than 50 deaths. The surge continues with the state going through its highest peak of COVID-19 cases, Daily Kos reported. On Thursday, an order threatening fines for those who do not isolate after testing positive was passed to address the concern.

As nurses statewide continue to resign, the state government has called on contract health care workers from across the country. Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced Tuesday that more than 1,000 contract health care workers are headed to the state to try and meet staffing demands in 50 of the state's hospitals.

"We have been working around the clock to secure additional medical personnel through both federal and private-sector sources to shore up the staffing shortage that our hospitals find themselves in. Getting boots on the ground this quickly is a step in the right direction," Reeves said during Tuesday’s news conference. Reeves noted that the federal government would reimburse the state for the $80 million that it will have to pay to the supplemental health care workers.

While some believe a lack of pay is the problem, nurses and other health care professionals have emphasized it is not. Despite this, some hospital systems urge the state to use part of its COVID-19 relief funds for retention bonuses.

"Do I think it's going to fix the problem? A lot of nurses have told me it's not about the money at this point. It's about, 'I need to recharge my battery,'" Dr. Randy Roth said, Chief Medical Officer of Singing River Health System.

Health care workers told CNN that as hospitals overcrowd, they must make quick and difficult decisions, including who to treat first. This rate of stress and burnout has increased as the COVID-19 crisis in the state worsens.

According to the Associated Press, last week, the University of Mississippi Medical Center opened two field hospitals in its parking garage to house COVID-19 patients for whom the hospital didn't have beds. Some hospitals have even begun canceling brain and heart surgeries due to a lack of ICU beds.

August 26, 2021

Eric Boehlert: Committed to doomsday narrative, media downplay evacuation triumph

Committed to doomsday narrative, media downplay evacuation triumph
What happened to "optics"?
Eric Boehlert
1 hr ago


snip//

And they were wrong.

Don’t hold your breath waiting for journalists to acknowledge that their assessments of Kabul have been badly undercut by the stunning evacuation success.

For the first 10 days of the refugee crisis, the media obsessed over "optics" and how they were "disaster" for Biden. Suddenly though, the press shows little interest dwelling on the optics of successfully extricating nearly 100,000 people without a single U.S. casualty. Instead, the press remains married to its narrative.

That early media emphasis on optics was all consuming. “President Biden's Reassurances on Afghanistan Contradict Chaotic Images on the Ground, Capping Week of Bad Optics For His Administration,” CNN announced.

According to the New York Times, the optics were so bad they threatened to doom Biden’s entire presidency. “The chaotic endgame of the American withdrawal has undercut some of the most fundamental premises of President Biden’s presidency,” the paper claimed, in a page-one piece that implied the Democrat was incompetent, void of empathy, and “struggling to assert command over world events.”

Those turned out to be hollow claims, given the U.S.’s commitment to evacuating so many people this month, and nearly 20,000 on Tuesday alone.

more...

https://pressrun.media/p/committed-to-doomsday-narrative-media

August 26, 2021

Trump Flips Out at House Committee After It Requests Secret Capitol Riot Documents

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-flips-out-at-house-committee-after-it-requests-secret-capitol-riot-documents?ref=home

Trump Flips Out at House Committee After It Requests Secret Capitol Riot Documents
SOMETHING TO HIDE?
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Correspondent-At-Large
Updated Aug. 26, 2021 5:02AM ET /
Published Aug. 26, 2021 4:35AM ET
Carlos Barria via Reuters

August 26, 2021

Ron DeSantis Says Biden Should Follow Florida's Lead on COVID

He's really pushing his buddy's monoclonal antibodies.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ron-desantis-says-biden-should-follow-floridas-lead-on-covid?ref=home

Ron DeSantis Says Biden Should Follow Florida’s Lead on COVID
‘GREAT SUCCESS’
Blake Montgomery
Reporter/Editor
Published Aug. 25, 2021 9:10PM ET

August 26, 2021

Florida Sees Worst of Pandemic So Far

https://politicalwire.com/2021/08/26/florida-sees-worst-of-pandemic-so-far/

Florida Sees Worst of Pandemic So Far
August 26, 2021 at 7:30 am EDT By Taegan Goddard

August 26, 2021

Bill McKibben: Slow-Walking the Climate Crisis

Annals of a Warming Planet
Slow-Walking the Climate Crisis
“Greenwashing” is too kind a term; this is more like careful sabotage.
By Bill McKibben
August 25, 2021


Travellers arriving in an unfamiliar city used to worry that they’d climb in a taxi and be driven to their destination by the most circuitous route possible, racking up an enormous bill. That’s pretty much what Big Oil and its allies in government and the financial world are doing with the climate crisis—in fact, at this point, it’s the heart of the problem.

Yes, there are a few bitter-enders who refuse to acknowledge that change must come. Earlier in the summer, the Saudi Minister of Energy, Abdulaziz bin Salman, reportedly told a Bank of America gathering that “every molecule of hydrocarbon” will be drained from his country’s oil fields. But most fossil-fuel profiteers have learned to talk the talk. Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, for instance, has lent more money to the fossil-fuel industry than anyone else—but he was wise enough to say, in April, that “climate change and inequality are two of the critical issues of our time.” The bank has pledged that, by 2030, it will invest a trillion dollars in “green initiatives that boost renewable energy and clean technologies.” Does that mean one of America’s largest financial institutions is moving away from fossil fuels? Of course not. Last year, Chase once again topped the charts as Big Oil’s biggest financial lifeline. Indeed, earlier this month, DeSmogBlog released transcripts from an “energy capital conference” held earlier in the year. There, Chase’s managing director, Greg Determann, was asked by one expert if the company was “still going to be lending to oil and gas companies.” “For a long time,” Determann said, without hesitation. “Mr. Dimon is quite focussed on the industry. It’s a huge business for us and that’s going to be the case for decades to come.”

The same logic that governs companies often governs countries, too. As the veteran energy analyst Ketan Joshi pointed out, the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, has set the de-rigeur target of “net zero by 2050,” but, in April, indicated that “the trajectory to any net-zero outcome is not linear, and anyone who thinks it is I think doesn’t get it.” Morrison traced a curve in the air with his hand after he spoke, Joshi noted, “suggesting emissions reductions occur very late in the 30 years between now and 2050.” “What we are seeing here is a mumbled acknowledgement of the macro problem, but an aggressive refusal to consider the micro components that comprise it,” Joshi wrote. “It is the core engine of climate inaction.”

This is absolutely correct. We call it “greenwashing,” but that’s too technical a term. We should call it what it is: people with a vested interest are learning how to slow-walk this crisis. They’ve done it with a thousand other crises, too, of course—one thinks of how, following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, segregationists managed to delay action for a decade or more, focussing on a single phrase in the decision: “with all deliberate speed.” But here they’re doing it in the face of an absolute deadline imposed by science. As the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made clear, we must cut emissions in half by 2030 or our chances of meeting the targets that we set in Paris just six years ago fall by the wayside. Slow-walking is sabotage—smiling, and deadly.

more...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/annals-of-a-warming-planet/slow-walking-the-climate-crisis

August 25, 2021

Brother Slams Call For Prayers As Jacque Put On Ventilator

https://crooksandliars.com/2021/08/jacque-put-ventilator-brother-slams-call


8/25/21 7:09am
Brother Slams Call For Prayers As Jacque Put On Ventilator
Wisconsin State Senator Andre Jacque has been put on a ventilator. Meanwhile, his brother calls out other Republicans for calling for prayers.
By Chris capper Li...


Last week, I reported that Wisconsin State Senator Andre Jacque (R-Branch Covidian), an anti-masker and anti-vaxxer, admitted to testing positive for COVID 19, shortly after testifying, while unmasked, in a crowded room about why he thought the state needed to ban mask mandates and vaccine requirements. Making things only worse, he only notified a handful of people and Republican leadership willfully failed to notify everyone in the room that they might have been exposed to the virus.

At the time, he was elusive on whether he had been admitted to the hospital and claimed to be "asymptomatic and experiencing only fatigue."

Two days later, we got the first indication that Jacque may have been lying when his colleague, Republican State Representative Shae Sortwell posted a request for prayers for Jacque on Facebook:



The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel followed up on this and contacted Jacque's office:



This past Saturday, there was an even stronger indication that all was not as it seemed when Jacque's brother, Pierre Jacque, laid into Sortwell with one helluva tirade (NSFW):



snip//

https://twitter.com/DavidBloomberg/status/1430494690923712525

August 25, 2021

'This is deadly serious': Pelosi denounces congressmen's surprise trip to Kabul

Good. They need to be punished.

'This is deadly serious': Pelosi denounces congressmen's surprise trip to Kabul
Yahoo News
Dylan Stableford
August 25, 2021, 10:45 AM


House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday joined the chorus of U.S. officials condemning Reps. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., and Peter Meijer, R-Mich., for secretly flying to Kabul in the middle of ongoing efforts to evacuate thousands of Americans and refugees following the Taliban's takeover of Afghanistan.

"This is deadly serious," Pelosi said during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill. "We do not want members to go."

The House speaker said she has not spoken to either of the lawmakers since their return and is not sure whether the unauthorized visit would affect committee assignments.

"It was not, in my view, a good idea," Pelosi added.

The surprise trip by the lawmakers Tuesday angered the State Department, Defense Department and White House, prompting Pelosi to issue a letter warning members of Congress to "not travel to Afghanistan and the region during this time of danger."

"Ensuring the safe and timely evacuation of individuals at risk requires the full focus and attention of the U.S. military and diplomatic teams on the ground in Afghanistan," she wrote in the letter.

more...

https://www.aol.com/news/deadly-serious-pelosi-denounces-congressmen-144551909.html

August 25, 2021

Airbnb to House 20,000 Afghan Refugees for Free Around the World

I wish I had an airbnb; I would be honored to help.


Airbnb to House 20,000 Afghan Refugees for Free Around the World
VACANCY
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says the plan starts immediately and that the company will foot the bills anywhere in the world.
Barbie Latza Nadeau
Correspondent-At-Large
Updated Aug. 25, 2021 10:17AM ET / Published Aug. 25, 2021 10:16AM ET


As thousands of Afghans reach safety through American-led global evacuations from the chaotic airport in Kabul, housing has emerged as the preeminent challenge in many countries. That is what has led Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says led to his pledge of free housing for 20,000 displaced Afghans on Tuesday.

https://twitter.com/bchesky/status/1430067315228352512
While Airbnb hosts will ultimately have to agree to accept refugees, Chesky says he feels the program will work. Airbnb has already provided free housing during natural disasters in many countries which began when they hosted more than 1,000 people in New York displaced by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. The company reports that it has offered such accommodation to more than 75,000 people worldwide. Airbnb launched an Open Homes project in 2017 that offers renters an opportunity to help their local communities. They have assisted people displaced by the Mexico City earthquake and wildfires in the U.S. and Australia.

“While we will be paying for these stays, we could not do this without the generosity of our Hosts,” he wrote. “I hope this inspires other business leaders to do the same. There’s no time to waste.”

more...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/airbnb-to-house-20000-afgthan-refugees-for-free-around-the-world?ref=home

August 24, 2021

GOP Operative to Be Sentenced for Voter Fraud

https://politicalwire.com/2021/08/24/gop-operative-to-be-sentenced-for-voter-fraud/

GOP Operative to Be Sentenced for Voter Fraud
August 24, 2021 at 10:30 am EDT By Taegan Goddard