All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[numberthirty]

That said, there is this take on that...

https://www.politifact.com/factcheck...deaths-uses-f/

Claim that Florida is undercounting COVID-19 deaths uses flawed comparison

That doesn’t appear to be what happened. While some of the numbers in the post are in the ballpark, the way Squire compared them creates a misleading picture.

This post was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Facebook.) Squire, a Democrat who ran unsuccessfully for the Virginia House of Delegates in 2017, told us he drew his information from a Reddit thread showing death data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

[numberthirty]

Bit of an interesting number at the end of this piece.

Billions?

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com...ployment-fraud

2 postal workers linked to California unemployment fraud

Officials have discovered billions of dollars in fraud in California’s unemployment system in the past year.

[CSTowle]

On Covid and its handling last year, I'd like to point out a few things. First, in fairness to state governments being slow to act we do every few years encounter some new virus such as H1N1, SARS, Bird Flu, etc. While they can and should be treated seriously very few thought it would end up being the situation we have now. And given the way both our healthcare system and state governments are run even if we had known it's hard to say we'd have been as on the ball as we needed to be to prevent as many deaths as we should have. Also, one ship in the NYC area was not going to make a significant impact. Though it certainly wouldn't have hurt if they'd utilized it more.

On the other hand. Of course we know the sick and elderly are most vulnerable whenever anything is going around, from Covid to the regular flu. Isolating them, especially after it started to become clear this wasn't just another H1N1 or Zika situation, and especially isolating the infected as far away from them as possible should have been priority 1. Which is why how it was handled in NY state needs to be examined, and anyone responsible for mishandling the situation should face serious consequences. Not allowed to resign because of an unrelated scandal to spend more time with their families.

Also, we should absolutely demand the Federal government investigate the handling by individual states such as Texas and Florida to determine how their actions led to and now are going to continue to lead to more deaths than the virus should have been able to claim. I know many on the right seem obsessed with the concept of state "sovereignty", but this isn't the 1700s and with interstate travel being the norm we can't afford to have state officials pandering to idiots in their base and undermining serious efforts by others states to keep this under control until we're out of the woods.

[worstblogever]

I'm in Arizona. I had a day of work during the holidays where I opened an e-mail from my manager in the hospital lab informing me that the morgue was nearly full, and a contingency plan list of who I needed to call should it be 100% full and who would be called into work to activated the temporary refrigeration trucks for the overflow. I feel like given my background, maybe I should weigh in here.

I spent months pulling my hair out as Republicans all screamed about "reopening" and that "the cure was worse than the disease", and just... just Trump f***ing alone not leading by example, let alone casting doubt on masks while putting all his cards into hydroxychloroquine until Covid-19 almost killed him. The Democratic response wasn't perfect, of course not. Cuomo and Newsom have the challenge of having the most densely populated centers in the country. A lot of over Democratic governors, Whitmer, Evers, for example, had Republican legislatures trying to strip them of the power to prevent death in the name of "freedom". The issue is cut and dry, Republicans have run the nation headlong into danger again, and again, and again, with rare exceptions (I will give Larry Hogan and Mike DeWine credit for at least doing something, but when the mean is Kristi Noem, Doug Ducey, Ron DeSantis & Greg Abbott, it's hard). Democrats were hamstrung prior to 1/20/21 at the federal level, and often in the state level by a bunch of complete dumbasses on the right, and a right-wing media actively misinforming the public. And it has been infuriating seeing hundreds of thousands of people die needlessly because of rampant stupidity. I've got waves of profiles in CSGOPOTD where the qualification for their entry was making the news as "Covidiots".

I'm going to wrap up by saying that the majority of folks in this thread are very informed about how the Covid-19 response was handled. And the person posting the most about it has spent the past day flailing more than Kermit the Frog having a tantrum. But at least Kermit, in spite of being a literal puppet has a better grasp on reality.

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, as well as 2020, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of Al Baldasaro, from the New Hampshire House of Representatives. Baldasaro is truly reality-challenged, having claimed in 2010 that the state of New Hampshire was selling children to homosexual families for $10,000 each in a hearing where he continually would say "no disrespect" after each homophobic accusation he uttered, as if that negated it. After returning to the New Hampshire state legislature for the 2017-2018 session, Baldasaro voted multiple times to continue to allow the barbaric practice of parents forcing their children into undergoing gay conversion therapy, because he’s that swell of an individual. Baldasaro commented on the 2012 GOP debate where a gay soldier was booed by the crowd, and said it was "great" and the soldier's admission was "disgusting". Baldasaro also warned against the United Nations Agenda 21 environmental treaty as stripping a citizen's right to go fishing (which makes no sense), and believes there is a "secret" alternate 13th Amendment to the Constitution which bans people of noble lineage from holding office. We also are re-sharing the same profile photo of Al Baldasaro that is from his wedding, where he posed with the whole bridal party with firearms, because he loves the 2nd Amendment arguably as much as his wife.

Even just in his daily affairs in Concord, Al Baldasaro managed to make an ass of himself. A bill seeking to criminalize new forms of public nudity, New Hampshire Republicans wanted a woman showing any part of their nipples in public to be a misdemeanor offense, but not men. After Rep. Amanda Bouldin shared the content of the bill on Facebook, calling it sexist, and Baldasaro was one of two members of the GOP who came running to defend their legislation... by shaming her in the most misogynistic and insulting ways possible, and saying her nipples would be the last ones he'd ever want to see.

In 2016, Al Baldasaro became a spokesperson for the campaign to elect Donald Trump, helping the cause by getting on Facebook to share stories to stoke Islamophobic, anti-immigrant fears that he found on anti-Islamic and white supremacy websites. Baldasaro was also very comfortable with Donald Trump's idea to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, comparing it to that great time we had Japanese internment camps during World War II. Baldasaro also went on CNN on behalf of Donald Trump to try and argue in favor of Trump's stance on using torture. Not "enhanced interrogation", but straight up torture. Before the 2016 elections were over, Al Baldasaro drew headlines again, when he wasn't content with just yelling "LOCK HER UP!" like most Trump supporters were at the Republican National Convention, choosing instead to literally call her "a piece of garbage" and that she should "be put in the firing line and shot for treason". That got him a visit from the Secret Service, but we'll note that Donald Trump or his campaign not only refused to criticize Baldasaro for this threat, but kept him as an adviser and continued to praise him. Baldasaro never apologized for his remarks, and a month later, was a part of the Trump campaign's attacks against Khzir Khan, a Gold Star parent, who in an extended rant on Twitter, said Khan, "disgraced" his son and "used him as a pawn".

After the 2016 election, Baldasaro also made baseless charges about widespread “voter fraud” taking place in New Hampshire, insisting he had “seen it with my own eyes”. However when pressed for this evidence, Baldasro could provide precisely none. In spite of Baldasaro’s long line of insane quotes including hints about shooting presidential candidates for treason, it’s noteworthy that he was one of a handful of people that the Trump administration lined up to be present for a very rare bill signing (this one empowering the VA to fire detrimental employees more easily). You would think the Secret Service would want to keep someone so willing to advocate for assassination as far away from the president as possible, let alone set him by his side in the Oval Office.

Al Baldasaro made the news several times during the Trump administration, frequently coming to the defense of Donald Trump like when he called the impeachment against him a “lynching”, and he was called out by then-Senator Kamala Harris for his racially insensitive remarks. Baldasaro’s defense was that over 60 years ago, Democrats were the racist party, and then he questioned whether or not Sen. Harris was actually African-American.

”Kamala, stop using the race card and dividing our country. Horse thieves, bank robbers and murders were lynch many years ago. It was the Democrat KKK, that lynched African Americans. Rumor has it Kamala that you are not African America. Is that true? Stop the Political BS!”

Baldasaro’s second foray into bigotry was to come running to the defense of Christopher Columbus during a debate in the New Hampshire state legislature as to whether or not Columbus Day should be replaced with Indigenous People’s Day in the state, where he addressed the chamber by saying, “Fellow paisans, come sta?” and citing what Italians had done for the state… which did not address all the, y’know, genocide and atrocities committed by Columbus.

Regrettably Al Baldasaro was elected to an eighth term in 2020, in spite of the fact that he was interviewed by The Good Liars and exposited his thoughts on terrorism, saying that “All the Terrorists are Muslims”, and was conveniently ignoring, y’know, all the white supremacists who had been doing it, and who, given current events, were going to attempt to murder several members of Congress in a violent coup within six months’ time.

It seems that Donald Trump’s current exile has Baldasaro quite perturbed, as he threatened to resign if Trump was found guilty in the Senate trial for his second impeachment. Well, that and he threw an absolute fit for being asked to mask up after he traveled to Florida during the Covid-19 pandemic, and returned to New Hampshire to run a committee meeting in the state legislature without a mask. Heaven forbid he do anything to keep his colleagues safe. And, we'll note, this was only one month after the New Hampshire Speaker of the House died from a coronavirus infection.

Maybe 2022 will be the year his district has enough and looks for a better legislator to represent them.

[numberthirty]

https://madison.com/wsj/opinion/colu...cea7cd38b.html

Myrella Gonzalez: Joe Biden must do more for immigrants

On Jan. 26, shortly after his inauguration, President Joe Biden issued an executive order to “ensure that our Nation’s incarceration ... systems are prioritizing rehabilitation and redemption” by eliminating the use of private prisons. It directed the U.S. attorney general to no longer create or renew federal contracts with “privately operated criminal detention facilities.”

While this order is a great step forward, it is also incomplete and exclusionary. It fails to include immigration detention centers and allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement to continue contracting with private detention centers. That means private corporations will continue profiting off detained immigrants.

Biden’s executive order, which aims to provide prisoners with “safe working and living conditions,” is a response to a 2016 Inspector General’s finding that “privately operated criminal detention facilities do not maintain the same levels of safety and security” when compared to federal prisons. Yet it does nothing to address the unsafe and unsanitary conditions of privately owned immigration detention facilities.

Federal data show that these privately owned detention centers house about 70% of all detained immigrants. But privately owned detention centers have a poor reputation for creating unsafe environments for immigrants.

[Kirby101]

Since this COVID relief bill is completely partisan, without a single Republican supporting it, I would think that every Republican in the country will now reject the $1400, as to not be a complete hypocritical. Or so one would assume.

[GindyPosts]

Since this COVID relief bill is completely partisan, without a single Republican supporting it, I would think that every Republican in the country will now reject the $1400, as to not be a complete hypocritical. Or so one would assume.

They should, in theory.

In reality, they'll take the money.

[Mister Mets]

You can't justify the elimination of the Mask Mandate in Texas using that logic. NJ and Texas are different, but so are every other state in the Union. There are also similarities. For example, Southern NJ is to Nothern NJ what Western PA is to Eastern PA politically. South Jersey has a warmer climate than Northern NJ, much like in California but on a smaller scale.

Masks and Social Distancing are universal precautions. Even after the majority of the population of the US are vaccinated, we will still need to wear masks for a while longer at least. Texas gets no free pass from the virus just because it is usually warmer, though obviously not always considering the recent snowstorm and power outage.

Warmer countries, like Brazil, have seen the same or similar levels of the pandemic as colder countries like Sweden.

Population density is not an excuse either. Many states with much smaller population densities, like the Dakotas, have seen rises in COVID infections.

It's less about such factors as climate and population density and more about state leadership or lack thereof.

We'll find out soon enough if this results in major increases.

I am not saying that, but hindsight is 20/20.
I am talking about Florida and Texas (which you are not) which by Fall should have known what to do, but they went against the CDC and all known medical advice, opened up, didn't mandate masks and deaths surged. Don't you think that is a bit worst than when NY and NJ were grappling with the virus in the beginning. And wouldn't you admit the charts show those States did control it after the first months while the GOP Governors of TX and FL screwed up.

This doesn't seem to be a case where blue states are all doing better than red states at the moment.

https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tra...r100klast7days

As a complication, New York City and the rest of New York state are counted separately.

At the moment, Texas is roughly on par with New Jersey (4.1 deaths/ 100K VS 3.8 deaths/ 100K) and New York state's overall 3.2 deaths/100K in on par with Florida's 2.9 deaths/100K.

Texas and Florida do remain roughly average in terms of percentage of deaths.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

I'm in Arizona. I had a day of work during the holidays where I opened an e-mail from my manager in the hospital lab informing me that the morgue was nearly full, and a contingency plan list of who I needed to call should it be 100% full and who would be called into work to activated the temporary refrigeration trucks for the overflow. I feel like given my background, maybe I should weigh in here.

I spent months pulling my hair out as Republicans all screamed about "reopening" and that "the cure was worse than the disease", and just... just Trump f***ing alone not leading by example, let alone casting doubt on masks while putting all his cards into hydroxychloroquine until Covid-19 almost killed him. The Democratic response wasn't perfect, of course not. Cuomo and Newsom have the challenge of having the most densely populated centers in the country. A lot of over Democratic governors, Whitmer, Evers, for example, had Republican legislatures trying to strip them of the power to prevent death in the name of "freedom". The issue is cut and dry, Republicans have run the nation headlong into danger again, and again, and again, with rare exceptions (I will give Larry Hogan and Mike DeWine credit for at least doing something, but when the mean is Kristi Noem, Doug Ducey, Ron DeSantis & Greg Abbott, it's hard). Democrats were hamstrung prior to 1/20/21 at the federal level, and often in the state level by a bunch of complete dumbasses on the right, and a right-wing media actively misinforming the public. And it has been infuriating seeing hundreds of thousands of people die needlessly because of rampant stupidity. I've got waves of profiles in CSGOPOTD where the qualification for their entry was making the news as "Covidiots".

I'm going to wrap up by saying that the majority of folks in this thread are very informed about how the Covid-19 response was handled. And the person posting the most about it has spent the past day flailing more than Kermit the Frog having a tantrum. But at least Kermit, in spite of being a literal puppet has a better grasp on reality.

30 isn't the one who posted an urban legend debunked by Politifact back in June.

[Mister Mets]

Since this COVID relief bill is completely partisan, without a single Republican supporting it, I would think that every Republican in the country will now reject the $1400, as to not be a complete hypocritical. Or so one would assume.

One can accept a benefit they think is a bad idea. We're supposed to abide by the rules even if we think the rules are bad.

You really gotta love the way conservatives try to accuse liberals of trying to politicize everything, all while they go out of their way to politicize the most trivial things they can find. Anyone who's been on the internet for any length of time knows that someone's gender isn't always immediately obvious from looking at their handle or profile picture, and that, because unlike some languages English forces us to use gendered pronouns when referring to people, it can sometimes be awkward if you assume someone's gender but get it wrong, so it can sometimes be helpful to just add that to your profile to avoid this confusion. I know that chuds like Gina Carano might think that they are dunking on the libs hard by trying to mock this practice, but just like everything else they do, it's really not the own that they think it is.

The argument about listing personal pronouns on twitter does not appear to have anything to do with people who have account names that don't identify their gender, or for whom English is a second language. It also wouldn't be necessary for famous people posting under their name.

Regarding the question of who is politicizing things, it would be the side calling for or being okay with someone being fired.

https://madison.com/wsj/opinion/colu...cea7cd38b.html

The way you posted the headline is a little odd, in that it suggests Myrella Gonzalez is someone we should know, whose opinion we should take seriously, when she seems to be a relatively obscure activist/ grad student.

I do respect her for being ideologically consistent in highlighting the problems the Biden administration has satisfying the expectations of people who were criticizing the Trump administration for its border policies.

There are now a record number of unaccompanied migrant children in facilities meant for adults, half held past the legal time limit.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/investi...dults-n1260097

[Jack Dracula]

Nevermind...

[Malvolio]

They should, in theory.

In reality, they'll take the money.

Of course they will, the same way Ayn Rand took her Social Security money when she became eligible for it, despite her writings on "individualism."

[PwrdOn]

The argument about listing personal pronouns on twitter does not appear to have anything to do with people who have account names that don't identify their gender, or for whom English is a second language. It also wouldn't be necessary for famous people posting under their name.

Regarding the question of who is politicizing things, it would be the side calling for or being okay with someone being fired.

So no one should ever be fired for any reason? Or do only public figures get that kind of job security?

[worstblogever]

30 isn't the one who posted an urban legend debunked by Politifact back in June.

And I don't believe I'm the one who lies about folks who are clearly white nationalists not being white nationalists to defend them because of a reflexive habit of defending the worst people in my party.

Y'know, if we're going to hold posting history against people.

[Tami]

And I don't believe I'm the one who lies about folks who are clearly white nationalists not being white nationalists to defend them because of a reflexive habit of defending the worst people in my party.

Y'know, if we're going to hold posting history against people.

Why is my name associated with Met's post?