Category: Uncategorized

I regularly test for COVID & while I tested negative earlier this week, today I tested positive with a breakthrough case. Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms & am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated & boosted.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) December 19, 2021

Germany’s Federal Ministry of Health just released a quarantine notice for travelers from the UK, noting: “The classification of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland incl. all British Overseas Territories, Isle of Man and the Channel Islands as an area of variants of concern is effective as of 20 December 2021 at 0:00 a.m.”

This follows limits on travel from the UK to France. “New rules have come into force for people entering France from the UK as the French government tries to slow the spread of the Omicron variant. Travellers need an essential reason for their trip unless they are French nationals, residents or hauliers,” reports BBC News.

The Washington Post has a fascinating–and terrifying–examination into how QAnon conspiracy theories start and spread, and their horrifying impact on the people who are the subjects of such rumors.

The Post’s investigation centers on the experience of a girl named Samara Duplessis, 13, from Michigan, whose unusual last name is shared by a pillow sold on online home goods retailer Wayfair  Like many teenagers, Samara was frustrated with being stuck at home during the pandemic and became annoyed with her mother, so she ran away from home.  Her lark lasted just two days, and she returned home safely, but not until after police issued a missing person’s alert and her family made pleas for her return on social media.

Jump to the Wayfair website:  a zodiac-themed pillow with the product name “Duplessis” gets listed on the site for $9,999; the high price is the default given by the website when the seller doesn’t list a price.  But in the warped mind of QAnon, that meant the pillow came with a special feature:  a trafficked girl.

Yes. Get shit done. Stop trying to solve every problem with one bill. Pass whatever you can every week. Bang the shit out of every success. Stop negotiating, stop hand wringing, and get shit passed. https://t.co/uRUpfuGbgd

— Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) December 19, 2021

This is exactly what Democrats need to do. Stop acting like we have to pass a huge omnibus bill or we’re powerless. If you can’t do exactly what you want, then learn to compromise and do what you can.

White House:  “Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on FOX are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances. Weeks ago, Senator Manchin committed to the President, at his home in Wilmington, to support the Build Back Better framework that the President then subsequently announced. Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalizing that framework “in good faith.”

“On Tuesday of this week, Senator Manchin came to the White House and submitted—to the President, in person, directly—a written outline for a Build Back Better bill that was the same size and scope as the President’s framework, and covered many of the same priorities. While that framework was missing key priorities, we believed it could lead to a compromise acceptable to all. Senator Manchin promised to continue conversations in the days ahead, and to work with us to reach that common ground. If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate.

“Senator Manchin claims that this change of position is related to inflation, but the think tank he often cites on Build Back Better—the Penn Wharton Budget Institute—issued a report less than 48 hours ago that noted the Build Back Better Act will have virtually no impact on inflation in the short term, and, in the long run, the policies it includes will ease inflationary pressures. Many leading economists with whom Senator Manchin frequently consults also support Build Back Better.”

NIH Director Anthony Fauci appeared on Meet the Press to discuss the Omicron variant. Fauci described how the transmissibility of Omicron appears to exceed all previous variants, and cautioned that initial claims from South African studies that Omicron causes fewer cases of hospitalization and need for oxygen may be due to prior experience with Covid19 infections in that study group.

Fauci also warned that “when you have so many infections, even if it is moderately less severe, that can overcome this moderate diminution in severity…our hospitals, if things keep looking like they do now, in the next week or two are going to be very stressed…”

Across the country politicians who represent rural areas are outraged at jobs being lost due to prison closures. In New York State alone, there are currently six prisons scheduled for closure. Closures of prisons is largely the result of a long-term decline in rates of violent crime in US cities. Prison populations are also likely to fall even further, as a result of multiple states decriminalizing marijuana, which makes it harder for urban police departments to arrest large numbers of Black men and women and have them sentenced to time in prison on bogus marijuana charges.

The solution is simple: instead of trying to boost rural economies by filling American prisons with black people who were arrested for a string of petty drug charges, let’s start filling American prisons with rural whites who traffic in illegal firearms, commit hate crimes, and threaten to maim and murder public officials.

It is with deep sorrow that The Isakson Initiative shares that former U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson passed away overnight on December 19, 2021, at age 76.

Sen. Isakson’s family is grateful for the prayers and support.

Funeral arrangements will be shared when finalized.

— Johnny Isakson (@SenatorIsakson) December 19, 2021

MAGA flyers will soon be venting their rage and insisting that airline companies are trying to “cancel them”  now that flight attendants nationwide are calling on the Federal Government to create real penalties for flyers who physically attack flight attendants or other passengers on flights reports Axios.

Airline unions are seeking an aggressive Federal response to the problem of physical attacks on flight attendants. Data from the FAA shows exactly why flight attendants are frustrated. Out of 5664 unruly passenger reports to the FAA, and 4072 mask related incidents, only 315 enforcement actions were initiated. The lack of follow-up and enforcement by the Federal Government is having an obvious, and substantial demoralizing effect on flight crews.

After dicking around for months, Senator Joe Manchin finally destroyed Biden’s main spending agenda, confirming he’s a no on the legislation on Fox News Sunday. “I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,” Manchin told anchor Brett Baier.

The House GOP is planning some really stupid Congressional probes – including an investigation of the Tucker Carlson NSA spying “scandal”, the IRS billionaire data leaks, and Merrick Garland supposedly criminalizing parents protesting school board meetings – if they take back the majority in 2022, Axios reports. One useful idea however is investigating the origins of COVID-19.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced that officials have accounted for all the people who had been listed as missing following the devastating tornadoes that ripped through the state last week, NBC News reports.

In Kentucky, 76 people died when the storms hit, with more than 100 people listed as missing.  As late as Thursday, a dozen people were still unaccounted for.  Fifteen people were killed in four other states hit by the wave of tornadoes.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Quintana Roo) has come to an agreement with Democratic Senate leadership in which he will release the holds he has put on dozens of Biden nominees for diplomatic posts but he will be allowed to get a vote on the floor for a pet bill to sanction businesses involved in the development of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, 95% of which was built during the Trump Administration, according to Reuters.

Cruz’s bill will need 60 votes to pass the Senate, according to the agreement Cruz reached with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, and given the 50-50 split in the Senate, it will not likely pass, meaning Cruz held up key diplomatic posts around the world for nothing.  Cruz’s bill will die on the floor sometime prior to January 14th, according to the agreement.

Strident anti-masker and Trump supporter Republican Washington state senator Doug Erickson died of coronavirus at 52, the Seattle Times reports.  An opponent of mask and vaccine mandates, Erickson reported he tested positive for the coronavirus after traveling to El Salvador last month.

Erickson pleaded with his state legislative colleagues to try to get monoclonal antibodies, which were unavailable in Central America.  He ultimately arranged an emergency medical flight back to the United States.

Saturday Night Live will pre-tape Saturday night’s episode without a studio audience, and the planned musical guest, Carli XCX won’t perform as the omicron variant of the coronavirus causes significant disruption in the New York City area, the Associated Press reports.

Host Paul Rudd will emcee the show for the fifth time, but the sketch comedy show will be radically different.  The show will be pre-taped, not live, and there will be no studio audience, so no laughter from a crowd.

“Due to the limited crew at tonight’s taping of snl my musical performances will no longer be able to go ahead,” Carli XCX announced on Twitter. “I am devastated and heartbroken.”

Broadway is closing down shows, the NFL has rescheduled several football games, and the Radio City Rockettes have cancelled a string of holiday shows reports ABCNews.

The Washington Post reports that Prince George’s County Schools in Maryland have gone to remote learning until mid-January due to a startling rise in cases.

Houston Texas has had several restaurants close temporarily due to staff either testing positive for, or potentially being exposed to Covid19.

The shutdowns are happening as reports of new Covid infections are on the rise across the US and Europe.

There was a great deal of shock and pearl-clutching after a Facebook whistleblower announced that the company had pursued a business model of “conflict driven engagement”. With a stunning lack of self-awareness, pundits in the 24 hour cable news landscape demonstrated shock and disgust that anyone would even consider using such a business model. Media observers like this author found all the self-righteous hyperventilating and remonstrations to be quite tiresome, as it’s clear that damned near all American commercial media have moved on to a “conflict driven engagement” model, and have spent the last three months bashing Biden because they’re angry that they no longer have the ad revenues that came from the former guy’s daily shit-flinging.

Fortunately, it appears that Democrats on the January 6th Committee are finally figuring out that you can’t win elections by sitting around talking about the media environment you wish you had. You win elections by learning to game the system that you have. The Democratic Party has an opportunity to absolutely dominate the 2022 mid-terms. There are three keys to making this approach work:

UFOs are freaky shit. If you’ve had even just a casual interest in the topic in the last few decades then what’s happened in the last few years is nothing short of groundbreaking. The United States government and military have come forward and said more or less “We don’t know what these things are, but they’re real insomuch as we can observe, we’re going to study them and report on them publicly going forward”. Congress is legitimizing study of the subject with a “UAP rapid response force” attached to the National Defense Authorization Act.

Four years ago this week, on December 16th, 2017 was when the New York Times published the first reports of a secret government program studying aerial phenomena in an article titled “Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program“. The acknowledgements that came since marked a rapid shift from 70 years of “No that was just a weather balloon you saw execute a 90 degree turn at an estimated 4,000 mph” or “That was ‘swamp gas’ reflecting the light of Venus that melted the front of your grandma’s car and put her friend in the hospital for 12 days”.

Central Banks in the United States and Europe are taking steps to address the problem of worldwide inflation in prices. The European Central Bank announced on Thursday that: “In the first quarter of 2022, the Governing Council expects to conduct net asset purchases under the PEPP at a lower pace than in the previous quarter. It will discontinue net asset purchases under the PEPP at the end of March 2022.” The Bank of England announced that they were increasing interest rates from an historic low of 0.1% to 0.25%. The United States Federal Reserve has aggressively dialed back it’s bond buying (quantitative easing) efforts, while predicting three interest rates hikes of 0.25% each in 2022.

The moves are in response to worldwide backlash over rising inflation in the world’s developed economies. As the United States and Europe started emerging from Covid shutdowns over the summer of 2021, a rapid increase in consumer spending helped to drive up costs for many consumer goods. Now many countries are seeing a populist backlash, as working class people ask why there is still “welfare for the wealthy”, in the form of on-going bond-buying and record low interest rates, while average working class people are suffering from increasing costs for housing, food and energy. Republican Party leaders in the United States have made it clear that they are very eager to talk about inflation, and any politician who fails to take concrete action to address the issue faces a very high likelihood of seeing their party suffer serious losses in upcoming election cycles.

From a tweet by Ron Filipkowski: “After testifying for over 3 hours in a Senate hearing where he suggested masks may not be necessary on flights, Southwest CEO Gary Kelly tested positive for covid. Sitting with him were CEOs of Delta, United, American, and Pres of Flight Attend.”