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

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published a profile on Sharron Angle, who really, really hates immigrants, running some of the most blatantly racist ad spots about them back in the 2010 election, the last time she ran for the seat, against Sen. Harry Reid. When confronted about her racism by Hispanic constituents, she used the defense that “they don’t look Hispanic to me, they look Asian”, which kind of made things worse. Angle also once tried arguing against rape exceptions in anti-abortion legislation because rape victims “need to make lemons from lemonade”, argues against water fluoridation because she believes the government deliberately poisons the water supply with lead, mercury, and arsenic (Flint, Michigan aside, “deliberately” a government deliberately doing it is insane), wanted to privatize Social Security, and falsely claimed unemployment benefits pay more than entry level jobs. She is also a climate change denier, shared her belief that the 9/11 hijackers came into the country through Canada (again, wrong), wants to eliminate the Department of Energy, Department of Education, and the Environmental Protection Agency,said there should be no separation of church and state in the Constitution, while claiming there are towns in America that have been taken over by Sharia Law. Angle was in the GOP Primary for Harry Reid’s seat again, six years later, but she had already established herself to be the kind of kook that cost the Republicans a shot at winning a Senate majority back in the first Tea Party wave and lost to U.S. House Rep Joe Heck. She seems to be the only one unaware that her career is over.

In both 2015, and in 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, whose past we delved deep into, all the way back to 1973 when he worked for a Baptist newspaper called “The Rapture Express” where he would write about the dread menaces of things like women not wearing bras, or wearing short skirts, or gays, or teenagers dancing! OH MY! Back in 1992, while campaigning for a U.S. Senate seat, Huckabee suggested the novel idea of quarantining AIDS patients. In both 2007 and in 2011, he used his newfound media profile on Fox News and conservative talk radio to lament the pregnancies of Jamie Lynn Spears, and Natalie Portman, for happening out of wedlock, which is a slightly different reaction than the defense he put up for the media paying any attention to Bristol Palin being pregnant in 2008. Huckabee has also defended the Confederate flag, and then compares abortion to slavery (he surprise, he supports fetal “Personhood”). Huckabee also praises “historian” and exposed fraud David Barton, and his lies that the United States is a Christian nation that was never intended to have a separation of church and state, saying “every American should be forced at gunpoint to learn from him”. (Because that in no way would be a military indoctrination into a theocracy.) Huckabee not only defended the “legitimate rape” comments by Congressman Todd Akin, but claimed people were only attacking him “because he was a Christian”. He can simultaneously complain about Beyonce being exploited by “Jay-Z acting like her pimp”, or Miley Cyrus being too scandalous, while he instead goes about performing on bass guitar for Ted Nugent in a rendition of “Cat Scratch Fever”, a song about getting an STD (Nugent, incidentally, also admits to having sex with underage girls numerous times in his heyday). After tensions rose in the wake of the shocking police killings of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castle, Mike Huckabee took it upon himself to respond to the outcry from the Black Lives Matter movement by calling for... the "Male Lives Matter" movement, because he just feels so attacked by all the lady folk. Huckabee, inspired by his Christian faith, advised people to not take in Syrian refugees "just because they're not living a very fancy life", but lied his ass off about a German family who were being deported they were Christians who home-schooled their children… when they weren’t even being deported, at all. Huckabee defended the idea of monitoring mosques, and chastising liberals for suggesting such an act would be a violation of the freedom of religion Muslims, trying to prove liberals were hypocrites about the premise because "they are waging war on Christmas". Huckabee responded to the shooter at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs by condemning him… and then adding a BUT to the condemnation, and pointing out that in his eyes, the people he killed working at the clinc were murderers, too. Huckabee has also called for the impeachment of President Obama for “acting like God”, freaked out over Michael Sam kissing his boyfriend on ESPN during the NFL draft, and threatened to leave the Republican Party should they ever stop fighting to overturn the ruling on same sex marriage. Incidentally, Huckabee has rabidly attacked the Supreme Court since their ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, saying the United States was now “worse than Sodam and Gomorrah”, and that HIS first amendment freedom of religion is being violated because gay people can get married. He’s enough of a hypocrite that he once called a proposed boycott of Chik-Fil-A by people who were upset that they support anti-LGBT causes “economic terrorism”, and then only a few years later, called for a boycott of Doritos for producing a rainbow-dyed product to promote LGBTQ awareness. Huckabee also creeped everyone right out when he gave his opinion on transgendered bathroom use and said he would have done it as a teen to “get into the ladies’ locker room”. Huckabee is enough of a “victimized Christian” that he complains that “the left won’t rest until there are no more churches” and after news broke that his longtime favorite family, the Duggars were revealed to have turned a blind eye to the fact that their son, Josh Duggar was molesting some of his sisters and their friends, Huckabee defended them. Mike Huckabee continues to occasionally drag his chicken-fried dumb ass onto Fox News to vomit out all sorts of folksy metaphors for why Republicans aren’t that racist or sexist (even when they clearly are doing so), while his creepy daughter worked for two years lying her ass off as the Deputy Press Secretary for the Trump Administration, and his posts on Twitter grow all the more bigoted with each passing year, like his attempts to link the MS-13 gang to Nancy Pelosi.

[worstblogever]

It was on this date in 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, that “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” first profiled Renee Unterman, who has served in the Georgia state legislature in its House of Representatives back in 1998, and moved up into the Georgia State Senate in 2002. She’s been highly conservative for almost two decades, but it was back in 2016 that she started to draw attention to herself for a bizarre determination to use her position as the head of the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services to unilaterally prevent hearings on solving the problem of getting funding going towards the state testing thousands of untested rape kits sitting in a back log, the victims who allowed them to be collected wondering if they would ever get tested, and their attackers ever face justice. Unterman’s bizarre defense for this was to claim there just WASN’T a backlog of rape kits under her watch, because if there us, the problem would have already been solved, “Johnny on the spot”. There was, obviously, bipartisan support to do this from both Democrats, and several Georgia Republicans in the State Senate. The bizarre choice of Unterman to do this earned her a name-drop on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in March of 2016.

Thankfully, there is a happy ending to the story, as the sponsor of the bill, Democratic Rep. Scott Holcomb, was aided by the Republican Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston, The whole legislative miracle of two parties working together to side-step an obstructionist misanthrope made it into a follow-up segment on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee in March 2017... and Renee Unterman decided it would be a great idea to try and paint herself as the victim in this story, calling Sam Bee “vile”, and getting really salty about the fact that Holcomb and Ralston were asking each other, “What the f*** is wrong with Renee?” because POTTYMOUTHS. Which, foul language is a real problem that something should be done about, unlike untested rape kits, AMIRITE, YOU GUYS?

As we discovered upon further research, this isn’t the only time that Unterman has used her position to unilaterally block common sense legislation, as she also did so to block a medical marijuana bill back in 2014, as well. With great power, comes a great responsibility to do nothing with it, like Bizarro Spider-Man would say.

The rest of Unterman’s voting record looks like you’d probably expect from someone who justifies all the s***ty things she does on being from “Red meat” country, including her co-sponsorship SB 396, one of the most bonkers gun laws in the past 20 years in our country (and that’s saying something), which would have allowed Georgia residents to even use deadly force to defend their property, in public, as long as the weapon used was legal. She also has voted to create stricter Voter ID measures aimed at disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of voters in Georgia, voted for some of her nuttier colleagues’ tinfoil hat conspiracy theory ban on human microchip implantations (which of course weren’t actually even happening), voted for unconstitutional attempts at making drivers’ tests to be given in English only, voted for Georgia Republicans’ attempt at banning picketing outside of corporations (because that’s not a clear violation of the 1st Amendment right to assemble, whatsoever), voted for a 4th Amendment violating bill to institute drug testing on welfare recipients, voted for a “religious freedom” bill to try to allow religious officials the right to refuse services to same sex couples, and several anti-abortion measures throughout the years.

Since we last covered Renee Unterman, she again made some headlines in Georgia after she weighed in on the candidates on the GOP Primary for Governor of Georgia. After a fellow legislator, David Clark, endorsed Brian Kemp, and not the candidate she preferred, Casey Cagle, she got on Twitter to accuse Clark of casting “votes for sexual predators preying on young children being bought & sold for sex”. Several Georgia state legislators from both sides of the aisle not only corrected the record on “the human trafficking bill” that Unterman sponsored not actually doing much of anything to stave off the problem, but blasted her for holding such a petty grudge and pulling some hyperbolic rhetoric to attack a colleague. Unterman never apologized or deleted the post.

In spite of how quickly she’s becoming infamous, Renee Unterman made the unnerving decision to think she was Congressional material, and opted to not run for re-election to the Georgia State Senate, instead choosing to make a run for the U.S. House of Representatives for Georgia’s 7th Congressional District. She lost that primary, only getting 17.5% of the vote, meaning… she will be out of office by 2021. We would now like to wish her our finest “GOOD RIDDANCE” send-offs at this time.

[PaulBullion]

Fallout from the Tulsa debacle or something more recent?

Parscale was banging Trump's crush, Hope Hicks, on the side.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Twitter Link

Trump? Skimming campaign funds into his business? NO! Say it ain't so! (sarcasm alert)

[Shining Trapezohedron]

Federal Law Enforcement Use Unmarked Vehicles To Grab Protesters Off Portland Streets

As a German, these kind of tactics are somewhat familiar.
From history books.
1930ish...

[Tami]

As a German, these kind of tactics are somewhat familiar.
From history books.
1930ish...

Some say Trump's growth was stilted aroudn that time.

[Tami]

Screenshot_2020-07-17 Laura Ingraham on Twitter Will Joe Biden do more to protect religious libe.jpg

Why oh why are these people so dumb?

[Malvolio]

Trump? Skimming campaign funds into his business? NO! Say it ain't so! (sarcasm alert)

His 2016 campaign was a money laundering scheme, so why wouldn't his 2020 campaign also be a money laundering scheme?

[Malvolio]

Screenshot_2020-07-17 Laura Ingraham on Twitter Will Joe Biden do more to protect religious libe.jpg

Why oh why are these people so dumb?

So Laura Ingraham now believes that a Democratic Presidential candidate somehow has the power to enact laws in a Canadian city?

[kidfresh512]

So Laura Ingraham now believes that a Democratic Presidential candidate somehow has the power to enact laws in a Canadian city?

Its scary fearmongering. Same playbook they use to say all Democrats want to turn the US into socialist Venezuela

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Screenshot_2020-07-17 Laura Ingraham on Twitter Will Joe Biden do more to protect religious libe.jpg

Why oh why are these people so dumb?

I'm sorry, but I must've missed the memo that said Toronto had become an American city. Laura Ignoramus needs to STFU. Seriously.

[The no face guy]

So Laura Ingraham now believes that a Democratic Presidential candidate somehow has the power to enact laws in a Canadian city?

She's playing slight of hand, Canada is further to the left of the United States; Toronto particularly so. By associating Biden to Canada, she hopes to rally the evangelical base to go out and vote this November.

I am sensing a disturbing trend in the last few weeks on the American right to lash out at our country. I boil it down to the fact that we have handled COVID19 quite well, while your leadership has made a mess of things. It's quite a stark contrast, I suspect the comparison bothers Trump.

[Mister Mets]

In some good news, it appears that the people who had COVID-19 develop a T-cell immunity to it. This may explain the limited evidence of an antibody driven immunity.

Now comes a new paper in press at Nature. It confirms that convalescent patients from the current epidemic show T-cell responses (mostly CD4+ but some CD8+ as well) to various epitopes of the N (nucleocapsid) protein, which the earlier paper had identified as one of the main antigens as well (along with the Spike and M proteins, among others, with differences between the CD4+ and CD8+ responses as well). Turning to patients who had caught SARS back in 2003 and recovered, it is already known (and worried about) that their antibody responses faded within two or three years. But this paper shows that these patients still have (17 years later!) a robust T-cell response to the original SARS coronavirus’s N protein, which extends an earlier report of such responses going out to 11 years. This new work finds that these cross-react with the new SARS CoV-2 N protein as well. This makes one think, as many have been wondering, that T-cell driven immunity is perhaps the way to reconcile the apparent paradox between (1) antibody responses that seem to be dropping week by week in convalescent patients but (2) few (if any) reliable reports of actual re-infection. That would be good news indeed.

And turning to patients who have never been exposed to either SARS or the latest SARS CoV-2, this new work confirms that there are people who nonetheless have T cells that are reactive to protein antigens from the new virus. As in the earlier paper, these cells have a different pattern of reactivity compared to people who have recovered from the current pandemic (which also serves to confirm that they truly have not been infected this time around). Recognition of the nsp7 and nsp13 proteins is prominent, as well as the N protein. And when they looked at that nsp7 response, it turns out that the T cells are recognizing particular protein regions that have low homology to those found in the “common cold” coronaviruses – but do have very high homology to various animal coronaviruses.

Very interesting indeed! That would argue that there has been past zoonotic coronavirus transmission in humans, unknown viruses that apparently did not lead to serious disease, which have provided some people with a level of T-cell based protection to the current pandemic. This could potentially help to resolve another gap in our knowledge, as mentioned in that recent post: when antibody surveys come back saying that (say) 95% of a given population does not appear to have been exposed to the current virus, does that mean that all 95% of them are vulnerable – or not? I’ll reiterate the point of that post here: antibody profiling (while very important) is not the whole story, and we need to know what we’re missing.

There are still major gaps in our knowledge: how many people have such unknown-coronavirus-induced T-cells? How protective are they? How long-lasting is the T-cell response in people who have been infected with the current SARS CoV-2 virus, and how protective is it in the declining-antibody situation that seems to be common? What sorts of T cell responses will be induced by the various vaccine candidates? We just don’t know yet. But we’re going to find out.

[Iron Maiden]

She's playing slight of hand, Canada is further to the left of the United States; Toronto particularly so. By associating Biden to Canada, she hopes to rally the evangelical base to go out and vote this November.

I am sensing a disturbing trend in the last few weeks on the American right to lash out at our country. I boil it down to the fact that we have handled COVID19 quite well, while your leadership has made a mess of things. It's quite a stark contrast, I suspect the comparison bothers Trump.

I think the only country that is statistically worse than the U.S. is Brazil isn't it?

[WestPhillyPunisher]

I think the only country that is statistically worse than the U.S. is Brazil isn't it?

I think you're right. On top of that, I've heard Brazil's president, said to have been a virus denier like Trump, tested positive. Chalk one up to karma.