Back in August of 2020, YouGov asked survey respondents “Do you think parents should be required to have their children vaccinated against infectious diseases?” to which 79% of those who identified as Democrats said yes and 10% said no, while 59% of Republicans said yes and 27% said no. The same question was asked in a survey this month and now YouGov finds 85% of Dems in favor/8% against and 46% of Republicans in favor/35% against, a 21 net drop in a year.

When asked specifically “Do you think students age 12 and up should be required to be vaccinated against COVID-19?”, 79% of Dems say yes/9% no, compared to 25% yes/63% no for Republicans.

Now, converting the Republican responses each question to a binary by kicking out the useless-for-this-exercise “I don’t know” assholes for the August 2020 Republican yes/no binary on all vaccines works out to 68.6% yes/31.3% no, then 56.8% yes/43.2% no in October 2021 (23.7 net drop), and 28.4% yes/71.5% no specifically on Coronavirus vaxes for kids in the same survey.

The crosstabs show the question on all vaccines (#27) was asked two questions after the one solely regarding COVID-19 vaccines (#25) and, while it was not worded specifically to exclude COVID-19 vaccines (which are not currently required on anywhere near the same scale as MMR, if they’re required at all at this point for students 12 and older anywhere), it shows that even when given the chance to at least partially correct themselves, anywhere between 19% and 28% of Republican respondents not affirmatively a yes on COVID-19 vaxes said no to all other vaxes.

Meaning that, in plainer terms, the surveys show that roughly about a quarter of all Republican voters have bought so much into the Coronavirus vaccine bullshit that they joined the ranks of the once smaller pre-2020 anti-every-kind-of-vax set. How’s that for effective right wing messaging?

CNN: “A number of high-powered lawyers who have represented Donald Trump in the past are sitting out his latest legal battle, as the former President prepares to assert executive privilege to block congressional investigators from getting information on the January 6 insurrection. That’s left Trump with a relatively small legal team without a lot of experience litigating issues of executive privilege as he readies for a court fight that could test major issues of presidential authority.”

“Some go-to attorneys have been spooked by Trump’s reputation for sometimes not paying as a client, according to several people familiar with conservative legal circles. Others watched closely as lawyers fled Trump’s prior teams, frustrated by him as a client or facing their own ethical predicaments. Others still want themselves and their firms to stay far away from Trump’s insistence that the election was stolen. ‘It’s not a 10-foot pole’ for law firms distancing themselves from Trump, ‘it’s a 1,000-foot pole,’ said John Yoo, a University of California at Berkeley law professor who held a senior Justice Department position in the George W. Bush administration.”

“Local police in Washington warned their law enforcement partner agencies a day before the January 6 pro-Trump rally that there were social media reports urging attendees to ‘come armed’ but said there was no credible threat for the event, according to an email obtained by a government watchdog group and shared exclusively with CNN. The email obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington was sent from the FBI’s field office in DC to the US Secret Service and provides a short summary of a Metropolitan Police Department briefing on January 5.”

“The email notes that eight firearms were recovered and five arrests were made at a pro-Trump event in November 2020 and points out that no firearms were recovered related to a similar pro-Trump rally the following month. But, it says, ‘Social media reporting is urging individuals attending the events on January 6 to come armed. No threats have been identified.’ More than nine months after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, which left more than 140 law enforcement officers injured and resulted in the death of US Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, the newly obtained email provides additional evidence that law enforcement dramatically misread the situation in the critical days before the riot” – CNN.

At Wednesday night’s campaign rally for Virginia Republican governor candidate Glenn Youngkin (who didn’t actually show up) a speaker introduced “Kim from Chesapeake” who was holding a flag the speaker said was carried at the “Stop the Steal” rally on January 6th. The crowd cheered and joined in pledging allegiance to that specific flag. No further details were provided in the video clip from awesome Twitter guy Ron Filipkowski, specifically whether or not that particular flag was used to beat a Capitol police officer on that day.

NBC News: “A Danish man who is in custody in Norway suspected of a bow-and-arrow attack on a small town that killed five people and wounded two others is a Muslim convert who had previously been flagged as having been radicalized, police said Thursday. ‘There earlier had been worries of the man having been radicalized,’ Police chief Ole B. Saeverud told a press conference.”

“The victims were four women and one man between the ages of 50 and 70, Saeverud said. The man is suspected of having shot at people in a number of locations in the town of Kongsberg on Wednesday evening. Several of the victims were in a supermarket, police said. Norwegian news agency NTB cited police as saying the suspect also used other weapons.”

“After months of speculation, Alex Murdaugh’s lawyers have finally admitted the South Carolina attorney – who’s already accused of orchestrating his own murder – is a person of interest in his wife and son’s double homicide. Jim Griffin, one of the scion’s attorneys, confirmed that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) began investigating Murdaugh ‘from the get-go’ in the June 7 murders of his 52-year-old wife, Margaret, and his 22-year-old son, Paul. Authorities say that Murdaugh called 911 around 10:07 p.m. after finding his family brutally shot near the dog kennels outside their 1,770-acre estate in Colleton County.”

“In the seven-minute call, Murdaugh tells a dispatcher, ‘I’ve been up to it now – it’s bad,’ while dogs bark in the background. Despite being named a person of interest, Murdaugh’s lawyer insisted to Fox Carolina on Wednesday that his client was visiting with his mother, who has dementia, at the time of the murders and ‘had no motive to kill them.’ ‘You would think that if Alex was the one who did it, that SLED would have been able to establish that pretty easily that night,’ Griffin said. ‘You would think they would have searched his house and found blood somewhere. You would think they would have found the murder weapons on the property. You would think they would come up with something to link Alex to the murders, forensically or independent evidence. To my knowledge, they have not done that'” – Daily Beast.

The Transportation Security Administration seized a record 4,495 guns at its checkpoints in airports in 2020, as people tried to board flights while armed, some intentionally, some accidentally.  The American airports with the most gun seizures, as reported by the Washington Post:

• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (391)
• Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (232)
• George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston (168)
• Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport (147)
• Nashville International Airport (115)
• Denver International Airport (107)
• Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (107)
• Salt Lake City International Airport (90)
• Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport (90)
• Dallas Love Field (88)

Glenn Youngkin, the Republican candidate for the Virginia governor’s seat, was a no-show at the rally in Richmond Donald Trump held to gin up GOP voters, the Associated Press reports.  With less than four weeks until the election, Youngkin apparently thought appearing with Trump would be too politically explosive.

Even though he was shunned by Youngkin, Trump effusively praised the GOP candidate, even though Trump stated earlier that people shouldn’t vote in upcoming elections because they were all rigged.

For his address, Trump continued to falsely declare that he was the actual winner of the November 2020 election and that widespread evidence of fraud was found.  “Glenn Youngkin is a great gentleman,” said Trump of the former Carlisle Group executive.

Griping that Instagram *dared* to suggest he fact-check a post before making it available–because he’s never asked to do it at his day job–Fox News host and personification of smug Tucker Carlson goes on to debunk things he’s saying in real time.

“We put that video on Instagram,” Carlson explains of a previously-aired segment.  “And when we put that video on Instagram, the following message appeared, and we’re quoting:  ‘Make sure information is reliable when sharing, exclamation point!’ And then it attempts to redirect you to a site, ‘Get Vaccine Info,’ some approved site, I guess info about policies at some company they don’t work at?  So you’re not allowed to explain information that you have first hand credible knowledge of, like your own employer’s own policy, then what rights do you have?”

Let’s break down Tucker’s lies, shall we?

“Well, America, the liberal hacks are at it, again,” Congresswoman Lauren Boebert (Q-Colorado) says perkily into the camera, “with their phony ‘Lauren Boebert is so dumb’ hashtag.  Dumb?  Really?  I’m not the one who tried to pass the largest tax increase in our nation’s history.  [She continues on with various false talking points to show how she’s not dumb.]  I’m not going to bother to entertain the haters that put this stuff out.”

Politico:  “Federal prosecutors on Wednesday described a ‘blatant’ conspiracy by a business associate of former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani to violate laws banning foreign donations to U.S. campaigns.

“Lev Parnas, 49, is accused of illegally funneling more than $100,000 in funds from a Russian businessman into U.S. political campaigns and groups, including a political action committee controlled by Trump allies. Prosecutors say the donations were aimed at helping Parnas and wealthy Russian Andrey Muraviev get the permits needed to launch legal marijuana businesses in various states. Prosecutors also detailed another $325,000 donation by Parnas that they said was illegal.”Assistant U.S. Attorney Aline Flodr told the jury that Parnas and co-defendant Andrey Kukushkin knew what they were doing was against the law.

“‘These men shoveled thousands and thousands of dollars of foreign money to U.S. politicians, laughing about how they were breaking the law along the way,’ Flodr said in the prosecution’s opening statement.  ‘Their crimes were blatant. … That is what secret foreign money infiltrating an American election looks like.’

“While the prosecutor avoided mention of Trump and Giuliani in her opening and even omitted the Republican affiliation of the candidates and groups that got the money, Parnas’ attorney Joseph Bondy was more direct with the jury about his client’s political allegiances. The defense lawyer said that Parnas became a fan of Trump and other GOP candidates, making and pledging big money to get access during the 2018 election cycle.”

A man made his way through the Norwegian town of Kongsberg Tuesday shooting a bow and arrow on a spree that left five people dead and two others wounded in the deadliest act of its kind in at least the last century, Reuters reports.

“The man used a bow and arrow … for some of the attacks,” police chief Oeyvind Aas told reporters. The police were investigating whether other weapons had also been used, he said.  “The man has been apprehended … from the information we now have, this person carried out these actions alone.”

Police say the killings took place in various areas in the city of Kongsberg, which has a population of 28,000.  Photos by a local newspaper show arrows stuck in the wood exterior of a building, implying the shooter fired many more arrows than just the ones that struck victims.

“The White House formally rejected the latest request by former President Donald Trump to assert executive privilege to shield from lawmakers a subset of documents that has been requested by the House committee investigating January 6, and set an aggressive timeline for their release.”

“The latest letter came after the Biden administration informed the National Archives on Friday that it would not assert executive privilege over a tranche of documents related to January 6 from the Trump White House. When the White House sent its first letter last week, the former President had not formally submitted his objections yet. The latest response from the White House counsel is more of a technicality in response to the request from Trump regarding the subset of documents, according to a person familiar, reaffirming the decision already made by President Joe Biden not to assert executive privilege” – CNN.

NBC News:  “The congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol on Wednesday subpoenaed a former Justice Department lawyer who played a key role in then-President Donald Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election.  The subpoena seeks sworn testimony and records from Jeffrey Clark, the former acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division, by Oct. 29.

“’The Select Committee needs to understand all the details about efforts inside the previous administration to delay the certification of the 2020 election and amplify misinformation about the election results,’ Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the committee’s chair, said in a statement. ‘We need to understand Mr. Clark’s role in these efforts at the Justice Department and learn who was involved across the administration. The Select Committee expects Mr. Clark to cooperate fully with our investigation.’

“A nearly 400-page report released by the Senate Judiciary Committee last week laid out a detailed timeline of Trump’s campaign to pressure DOJ officials to help him try to reverse Joe Biden’s victory. The report’s findings are based on testimony from three former DOJ officials as well as documents and emails.  The report said that Trump wanted to replace acting then-acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen with Clark, who devised a strategy with the president for the DOJ to intervene in Georgia’s appointment of presidential electors and to use this model in other states. Rosen and then-acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue rejected Clark’s proposal, the report said.”

President Trump did not say don't vote. He pointed out the obvious consequence of not fixing fraud and holding those who broke laws accountable will be Republicans sitting out

If we don't fix our elections, many voters will think their vote won't counthttps://t.co/mufmgdO3fj

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) October 13, 2021

“If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020 (which we have thoroughly and conclusively documented), Republicans will not be voting in ‘22 or ‘24. It is the single most important thing for Republicans to do” says Former Guy in a gift to Dems packaged in a statement.

AP: “A judge has ruled that a Colorado county elections clerk cannot be involved in the November elections after multiple investigations, including a criminal probe by the FBI, were opened into a security breach of the county’s voting machines. Judge Valerie Robison issued an injunction Wednesday prohibiting Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters and her deputy, Belinda Knisley, from acting as designated election officials for the upcoming elections. Robison ruled that Peters and Knisley ‘committed a breach and neglect of duty and other wrongful acts’ making them ‘unable or unwilling to appropriately perform’ their duties as election officials.”

“Secretary of State Jena Griswold sued to remove Peters as clerk and recorder after she said images of election equipment management software from Mesa County were obtained by elections conspiracy theorists and posted on far-right blogs. Her office says one of the images was taken May 23 from a secure room in Mesa County where the voting equipment was stored and was accessed that day by Peters, who allowed a non-employee into the room. The secretary of state’s office has identified the person it says was allowed into the secure room but has refused to say anything more about who he is or why he was there. The Associated Press isn’t naming him until more information becomes available. He has not been charged with a crime. In a statement issued after the ruling, Griswold praised the judge’s order which granted her requests for the appointment of Wayne Williams as the designated election official and Sheila Reiner as the election supervisor for Mesa County. ‘The Court’s decision today bars Peters from further threatening the integrity of Mesa’s elections and ensures Mesa County residents have the secure and accessible election they deserve,’ she said.”

Timothy John Watson, a 31 year old man from Raston, West Virginia, accused of selling conversion kits that turn rifles fully-automatic to far-right white supremacist groups, the Associated Press reports.

Watson wasn’t convicted for selling the conversion kits, however.  He received his jail sentence as part of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors for possessing an illegal silencer.  Watson had previously faced three other charges relating to manufacturing and selling kits that would convert AR-15-style assault rifles to fully-automatic.

Arrested in November 2020, Watson was using a 3D printer to manufacture some of the parts for the conversion kits.  Prosecutors allege he sold hundreds of kits to up to 800 people, many of them affiliated with the Boogaloo movement, which is preparing to start a civil war in the United States.