“TALLAHASSEE – Amid a COVID-19 surge in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis pledged Friday that he will block any effort to impose mask mandates, touting a forthcoming executive order to stop counties from requiring them in schools,” reports the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.
“The announcement comes just “[d]ays after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued new guidance that everyone in K-12 schools should wear a mask regardless of their vaccination status.”
Many corporate stakeholders in the retail and service industries are bemoaning a shortage of new job applicants that has left them short-staffed. This phenomenon should have been obvious to companies years ago, and they really only have themselves to blame for a shortage of workers. When one starts assembling a list of all the factors contributing to this trend, the reality of a decline in the working class labor force should have been obvious to all.
“Conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine remains hospitalized in his battle with COVID-19. According to a tweet from SuperTalk 99.7 WTN, he was placed on a ventilator earlier this week ‘out of an abundance of caution.’ His brother, Mark Valentine, shared an update on his condition on Friday, saying he needs to be placed on an ECMO machine. ECMO stands for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation and is said to be similar to the heart-lung by-pass machine used during open-heart surgery. ‘Phil made it through the nite [sic]. He needs to be on an EKMO [sic] machine which is lung part of a heart/lung machine. We’re trying to get him to a hospital with that equipment via helicopter. The protocol requires he be able to be on his back for several hours which I didn’t think he could do… but he did! We’re checking bed availability now and if he is a candidate for transport. It ain’t over,’ Mark Valentine wrote” – WTVF.
NPR Austin: “It took a lengthy court battle, but the Texas Department of Safety has been allowing voters to update their voter information at the same time they update their driver’s license information online. The Texas Civil Rights Project filed a federal lawsuit against the state on behalf of three voters in Texas who thought they had updated their addresses on their voter registration through the DPS website. They later found out that never happened because online voter registration is illegal in Texas. The plaintiffs in the case were Jarrod Stringer, Nayeli Gomez and John Harms, as well as two organizations, MOVE Texas and the League of Women Voters of Texas. The lawsuit claimed Texas was violating the National Voter Registration Act – which includes federal motor voter laws – and the US Constitution. The Texas Civil Rights Project first sued the state five years ago, but the lawsuit was thrown out on a technicality. The group sued again shortly after.”
“As a result of that lawsuit, a federal judge ordered the state to change its practices last year. This forced Texas to ‘create the first-ever opportunity for some Texans to register to vote online’ starting in September, the group said in a press release. Mimi Marziani, president of the Texas Civil Rights Project, told KUT the DPS data shows that about a million voter registration transactions have occurred in the past 10 months. ‘That means that’s an average of a 100,000 Texans per month are now registering to vote – or updating their voter registration – with their online drivers’ transaction,’ she said. ‘That’s a lot of people.'”
“Madison Cawthorn, the Republican congressman representing Western North Carolina’s 11th District, had his gun taken by airport police and will likely face a federal fine and loss of a special security status, local and federal officials said” USA Today reports.
During day three of the Olympics, many spectators were delighted by the sight of what looked like a little robotic van chasing rugby balls that had flown out of bounds. The little device, which had glowing led “eyes” similar to the characters in the Disney “Cars” series, was developed by Toyota Motor Company and is designated as a “Field support robot”, and was “one of a handful of robots designed to streamline the Tokyo Olympic Games,” reports NPR.
Wall Street Journal: “Growing numbers of people are getting vaccinated in areas hit hard by the Delta variant, offering a glimmer of hope but still falling far short of what is needed to fight Covid-19, public-health officials say. Several factors are driving the increase in vaccinations, including worries about the infectiousness and severity of the Delta variant, growing confidence in the safety of vaccines and the influence of family and friends, health officials and residents say. More employers are implementing vaccine mandates, including a Walmart Inc. requirement for corporate staff announced Friday.”
“Some states with soaring case counts and hospitalizations have logged upticks in their low vaccination rates. In Alabama, where 35% of people are fully vaccinated, the seven-day average of daily vaccinations reached 10,732 on July 28, more than double the figure on July 7, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. In Arkansas, where 37% are fully vaccinated, the seven-day average more than doubled to 8,676 over that period, and in Missouri, where 41% are fully vaccinated, it more than doubled to 13,103. In the U.S. as a whole, 50% of the population is fully vaccinated. The seven-day average of daily doses climbed to about 535,000 on July 27, compared with a recent low of around 431,000 on July 8, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. ‘As the cases are spreading, it gets people’s attention that I guess this isn’t over,’ said Dr. John Waits, chief executive of Cahaba Medical Care, a community health center with locations across central Alabama. ‘It’s forcing people to take a second look’ at vaccinations.”
Thanks to the SolarWinds hack, Russian hackers were able to access the email accounts of 80% of employees in four federal prosecutors offices in New York in 2020, the Department of Justice announced Friday.
According to the Associated Press, the DOJ says the systems were being compromised from May 7 to December 27, 2020; the SolarWinds breach was announced in December of last year. The hack allowed the Russian hackers to access hundreds of SolarWinds clients and at least nine federal Cabinet departments.
The Trump administration didn’t enact any sanctions against Russia; the Russian government has denied it had any role in the hacks. The Biden administration, however, in April expelled Russian diplomats, in response to the SolarWinds hack and Russian interference in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.
Three Republican members of Congress will face ethics charges for more than $22 million in stock trades for which they had failed to file the required under the STOCK Act for financial transparency, Slate reports.
Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Congressman Pat Fallon of Texas and Congressman Blake Moore of Utah–all first term members of Congress–all freshmen members–failed to report within the required 45 days. Fallon’s case is exceptionally egregious: he dumped $250,000 in Microsoft stock days before it was announced that the company lost the exclusive contract for the $10 billion Pentagon Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI) cloud computing system. Falloon sits on the House Armed Services Committee’s brand new Subcommittee on Cyber, Innovative Technologies, and Information Systems, which oversaw the contract.
“When members of Congress trade individual stocks and fail to disclose those trades, they break the law and diminish the public’s trust in government,” the complaints, filed by the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, states. “The recent prevalence of STOCK Act violations in the House shows that merely the threat of a fine is not deterring members of Congress from breaking the law; real accountability is necessary.”
HYDROXYCHLORIQUINE
— Amy Kremer (@AmyKremer) July 31, 2021
https://youtu.be/FWVV0yNfZNs
“The bottom line is that a huge number of vaccinated people are getting COVID, and some of them are getting very sick, even dying,” Fox News host (and humanoid who wouldn’t thrive in a truly competitive contest for survival of the fittest) Tucker Carlson claimed last week that he never attempted to dissuade people from getting vaccinated.
How things change in a week.
To be clear: more than 95% of people who are being hospitalized with severe COVID during the current wave are unvaccinated. And the vaccine doesn’t prevent you from getting infected, but it will prevent you from likely getting a severe case.
NBC Boston: “MBTA Green Line service has been suspended on the B Branch because of a collision between two trolleys near Babcock Street that left more than 20 people hurt, officials said. None of the 23 injuries were thought to be life-threatening, according to the Boston Fire Department and Emergency Medical Service, which were two of the agencies at the scene of the crash on Commonwealth Avenue near Boston University. Train service on the branch was suspended between Packard’s Corner and Kenmore, according to the MBTA. Shuttle buses were replacing trolleys between Kenmore and Washington Street. It wasn’t immediately clear what caused the crash, and MBTA General Manager Steve Poftak didn’t want to speculate as the investigation began. ‘We will obviously get to the bottom of this. This should not happen and we will find out why it happened and will ensure that it won’t happen again,’ he said Friday evening.”
Note: This Breitbart article doesn’t actually exist. We just made it look real in the browser inspector.
We don’t have much at all in the way of regular article formats here at National Zero besides Jack’s Random Thoughts Friday (tonight’s volume XXX!). We do have our tropes like the unnamed, interminably long retrospective style, “Jim Jordan wrestles with [some contrivance]”, and “MAGA Land [reacts angrily to something]”. The “MAGA Land” articles are always simply a comment (sometimes several) plucked from a right wing site, usually but not always the Gateway Pundit or Breitbart, of an article’s top comment – invariably some angry fanboy ranting at whatever the grievance of the day is, or otherwise saying something really stupid, like “MAGA Land inspired by quote from guy who invented the Reptiloids” and “MAGA Land selectively upset over rioting and looting again“. It’s usually easy material to mine for laughs or aghast WTFs for our readers.
Usually.
A staffer for Republican West Virginia Congressman David McKinley filed an ethics complaint against GOP North Carolina Representative Madison Cawthorn after a heated exchange between the two in McKinley’s office, Politico reports.
Cawthorn allegedly told the staffer to lower her voice when addressing a member of Congress after Cawthorn showed up at McKinley’s office to tell McKinley to remove Cawthorn’s name as a co-sponsor of a bill. McKinley was not in the office when Cawthorn made his unscheduled visit Thursday and Cawthorn apparently took his anger out on McKinley’s staff.
Cawthorn and McKinley took their feud to the House floor later in the day, with the pair loudly exchanging insults and some onlookers fearing that the argument would lead to blows being exchanged.
Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem says she won’t do more to promote coronavirus vaccines, claiming that the state’s outreach efforts are at “a saturation level where people start to tune you out,” the Associated Press reports.
While South Dakota experienced the third-highest number of infections per capita of all state, Noem has become a media starlet in conservative circles, with many pundits pointing to her as a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
Republicans and many right-wing commentators have shifted their messaging in the last week, encouraging people to get one of the available vaccines as the delta variant sweeps across the country and data show that more than 95% of people hospitalized with COVID are unvaccinated.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn on mask mandate: "If I am to cowardly bend the knee here, like those on the left wish, then what is to stop you all from taking your tyranny to the rest of this country that I love." pic.twitter.com/INKQTA0xt2
— The Hill (@thehill) July 30, 2021
“Walmart Inc., the largest private employer in the U.S., is requiring its headquarters and regional staff to be vaccinated by Oct. 4, joining Alphabet Inc.’s Google in instituting a policy that other big companies may soon follow as the delta variant continues to spread. The mandate covers all campus staff, as well as market, regional and divisional employees who work in multiple facilities, Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon said in a memo Friday. A Walmart spokesman couldn’t immediately say how many people that entails. The policy includes all new hires as well. Walmart separately told its frontline store and warehouse associates Friday to don masks again, and doubled the cash incentive it’s providing for employees to get vaccinated to $150” – Bloomberg.
I don't. https://t.co/4Q7fmGEkLv
— God (@TheTweetOfGod) July 30, 2021
Politico: “Republicans loved seeing Herschel Walker score touchdown after touchdown. They doubt he can carry them to the Senate majority. Walker is a former NFL star and Donald Trump’s favorite to take on Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock in the Georgia Senate race next fall. But as years-old allegations about Walker’s marriage and business dealings weigh on his potential bid, Senate Republicans are raising concerns about his past in a state widely viewed as their best pickup opportunity next year. ‘Some of it’s pretty bad, obviously: physical abuse and pulling a gun on his wife, if that’s true,’ said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a former chair of the NRSC who is close to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. ‘I want to win that race. And to the extent that he’s handicapped by some of these things that would make that unlikely, I’d prefer to have somebody else.'”
“‘Trump’s not doing so well,’ said one Senate Republican, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly. ‘That doesn’t mean he doesn’t have some clout. But he’s not God… McConnell thinks that there are a lot of people out there that fundamentally don’t want the president just choosing this person.’ While Walker seems to be in no rush to announce a decision, some senators are taking that as a sign that the possible recruit is having second thoughts. And they’re warning him to be ready for an onslaught, if he does decide to take on Warnock. ‘Don’t do it if you don’t want to do it, if you don’t have it in your belly, if you’re not prepared to take the spears and the arrows,’ said Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.). ‘Because I’ve been in this business for a while. And it takes a big heart, a lot of wind and thick skin. My observation… he seems to be having a hard time making up his mind.'”
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