February 6, 2021

Florida man with Florida tattoo on forehead arrested for calling 911 to ask for ride home

PORT RICHEY, Fla. (WSVN) — Deputies have arrested a man with a tattoo of the State of Florida on his forehead after he was accused of misusing the 911 calling system.

According to an arrest report obtained by Fox 13, 22-year-old Matthew Leatham was arrested early Sunday morning by Pasco County deputies.

According to deputies, Leatham called 911 to ask for a ride home and cursed at the operator while on the phone. Investigators said the operator gave Leatham the non-emergency number. ..............(more)

https://wsvn.com/news/local/florida-man-with-florida-tattoo-on-forehead-arrested-for-calling-911-to-ask-for-ride-home/

February 6, 2021

Kagan Warns the Supreme Court's New COVID Decision May Kill People

(Slate) Late on Friday night, the Supreme Court blocked California’s public health ban on indoor religious services in a splintered 6–3 decision that augurs a major shift in the law of religious liberty. Justice Elena Kagan’s extraordinary dissent accused her conservative colleagues of endangering lives by overruling public health officials and potentially facilitating the spread of COVID-19. But the court’s new conservative majority ignored her warning—and, in the process, gave itself new powers to strike down alleged burdens on religious freedom. The Supreme Court effectively tossed out decades of case law in a late-night emergency order, unsettling precedent that states have relied upon to craft COVID restrictions. As Kagan sharply noted, Friday’s order “injects uncertainty into an area where uncertainty has human costs.”

South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom is the latest in a long line of COVID cases to reach the Supreme Court. The plaintiffs challenged three pandemic-related restrictions on religious worship: a total ban on indoor services in areas where cases are surging (which covers much of the state right now); a 25 percent cap on indoor services where they are permitted; and a ban on singing and chanting during those services.

In amuddled order, SCOTUS shot down the total ban on indoor services, but upheld the 25 percent cap and the singing ban. The majority’s decision—issued as a highly infectious “California variant” of the coronavirus sweeps across the state—allows residents to resume indoor worship, the cause of countless superspreader events since the start of the pandemic. While there is no single majority opinion, five justices supported the proposition that California’s regime violates free exercise because it treats secular businesses more favorably than religious establishments. Notably, no justice in the majority even pretended to apply the appropriate standard for this emergency request, which requires plaintiffs to prove that the legal rights at issue are “indisputably clear” and that an injunction is “in the public interest.” They simply issued a decision on the merits, another example of the court making law through its shadow docket. ..............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/02/covid-elena-kagan-supreme-court-kill.html

February 6, 2021

Michiganders drank more than the CDC defines as 'heavy drinking' in 2020, according to survey

(Detroit Metro Times) Michiganders coped with the pandemic by drinking about 18 alcoholic drinks a week on average in 2020 — which is more than the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention consider to be "heavy drinking."

That's according to a survey by DrugAbuse.com, which surveyed more than 3,500 adults over the age of 21 in January.

The CDC considers heavy drinking to be more than 14 drinks per week over the past year for men, and more than 7 drinks per week for women.

A standard drink is defined as 12 ounces of beer (5% alcohol), 5 ounces of wine (12% alcohol) or 1.5 ounces of liquor (40% alcohol). .......(more)

https://m.metrotimes.com/table-and-bar/archives/2021/02/05/michiganders-drank-more-than-the-cdc-defines-as-heavy-drinking-in-2020-according-to-survey#.YB7K1YSPe5E.facebook

February 6, 2021

White nationalism movement has long history in Michigan

(Detroit News) Lansing — Michigan residents’ participation in the white nationalism movement has put the state on the national stage.

It was the first state to protest stay-at-home orders in April 2020.

A planned kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer by those with ties to militia groups was exposed by law enforcement agencies in October.

....(snip)....

Historian Craig Fox documented “The Realm of Michigan” as one of the leading states for Ku Klux Klan membership during its resurgence in the 1920s in his 2011 book, “Everyday Klansfolk: White Protestant Life and the KKK in 1920s Michigan” (Michigan State University Press).

“As it had done elsewhere, the Klan swept across Michigan like wildfire,” Fox wrote. More than 60 Michigan counties had at least one KKK unit in that period. ...........(more)

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2021/02/06/white-supremacy-has-long-history-michigan/4372296001/

February 6, 2021

Right-wing dogfight

(Detroit Free Press) LANSING — About 2,000 Michigan Republicans began voting Saturday morning amid a bitterly divided choice for state party chair, during a convention conducted online due do restrictions on large in-person gatherings because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Incumbent Laura Cox of Wayne County has accused challenger Ron Weiser of Ann Arbor of orchestrating a "sleazy payoff" with party funds and wants delegates to re-elect her only until someone she considers a more suitable successor can be selected. Weiser has accused Cox of trying to falsely smear him in a desperate attempt to hold on to her job.

Results are expected later Saturday.

The unusually public split among party leaders is not over the direction of the GOP after four years of President Donald Trump or the deadly fallout from false claims that the Nov. 3 election was stolen. Both Cox and Weiser are strong backers of Trump. Cox promoted what she called "deeply troubling irregularities" around the election and pushed for delays certifying Michigan's results, while Weiser chose as his co-chair a vocal proponent of election fraud claims who organized busloads from Michigan to the Jan. 6 Washington, D.C., demonstration that preceded the violent storming of the U.S Capitol, in which a Capitol police officer was killed and a rioter shot dead. ............(more)

https://www.freep.com/story/news/politics/elections/2021/02/06/michigan-republican-party-convention-weiser-cox/4418538001/

February 6, 2021

There are multiple coronavirus vaccines available. Is any one of them better?

(Salon) Assuming that the paperwork all goes as planned, the United States will likely have three novel coronavirus vaccines available by late spring: the Moderna vaccine, the Pfizer vaccine, and the forthcoming Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, which is already being distributed in the United Kingdom and will soon face regulatory scrutiny here.

Many Americans don't have a choice as to which vaccine they get: their health care provider issues whatever they have on hand. Yet as time goes on and scarcity diminishes, some of us might actually be faced with a choice. That raises a curious question: With so many vaccines available to the public, which one should patients opt for if they do have the choice?

Notably, there are even more than three vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 available if you include the rest of the world. According to the Regulatory Affairs Professionals Society, an international organization for individuals involved in the regulation of healthcare and related products, there are nine vaccines that had been authorized and/or approved in at least some countries as of the end of January: the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine, the Moderna vaccine, the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine, two Russian vaccines (Sputnik V and EpiVacCorona), three Chinese vaccines (by Wuhan Institute of Biological Products/Sinopharm, Beijing Institute of Biological Products/Sinopharm and Sinovac) and one from India (Bharat Biotech, ICMR). Another 58 vaccine candidates were listed as being in various stages of development.

....(snip)....

Dr. Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association (APHA) and former secretary of health in Maryland, expressed a similar point. He wrote to Salon that all of the vaccines are "highly safe and highly effective" and that if people are in a position to choose between different options, "you need to decide which characteristics you care about since there are subtle trade-offs," such as whether a given vaccine only requires one shot or two. He added that there are "no substantive differences in side effects, no differences in protection for severe disease or death, differences in preventing transmission is still unknown and the differences between overall effectiveness are minor." ...........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/06/there-are-multiple-coronavirus-vaccines-available-is-any-one-of-them-better/

February 6, 2021

George Conway's Lou Dobbs limerick:

https://twitter.com/gtconway3d/status/1357860811750924288?s=20

February 6, 2021

Fish would like you to shut up, please

(Salon) Vacationers relaxing on the beach might feel soothed by the rhythmic sound of the waves lapping up against the shore.

It turns out the feeling is not reciprocated by the fish who have to listen to us, however. Indeed, for millions of marine animals that live in the ocean, the sound of the ocean isn't relaxing or peaceful. It is a cacophony of strange, upsetting noises — and their very quality of life is being destroyed by them.

An article published in the journal Science on Thursday details how anthropogenic ocean noise — that is, noise in the ocean caused by human activity — is wreaking havoc on our marine ecosystems. It's difficult to think of a type of creature that has not been impacted, be they cetaceans like whales and dolphins struggling to communicate with their singing and clicking (respectively) to baby clown fish being homeless because they cannot recognize their coral reefs or numerous species of fish displaying signs of stress.

"Oceans have become substantially noisier since the Industrial Revolution," the authors explain. "Shipping, resource exploration, and infrastructure development have increased the anthrophony (sounds generated by human activities), whereas the biophony (sounds of biological origin) has been reduced by hunting, fishing, and habitat degradation." .........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/02/05/the-oceans-have-become-a-cacophony-of-man-made-noise-thats-upsetting-sea-creatures/

February 6, 2021

The Greene Party....

.... that's what Medhi Hassan is calling Republicans.