Sticks & Pricks

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Author: patd

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked. "Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad." "How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice. "You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.” ― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

32 thoughts on “Sticks & Pricks”

  1. the guardian:

    Clinton, Bush and Obama in 2017.

    Former US presidents Barack Obama, George W Bush and Bill Clinton have pledged to get vaccinated for coronavirus on television to promote the safety of the vaccine.

    […]

    Many Americans say they will not agree to be vaccinated against Covid-19. A poll by Gallup, released in mid-November, showed that 42% of the country would not take the vaccine even if it was “available right now at no cost”.

    Obama said he would take the vaccine once it was available for people “who are less at risk”. The 44th president is 59 and is not known to suffer from any serious health problems.

    “I may end up taking it on TV or having it filmed, just so that people know that I trust this science, and what I don’t trust is getting Covid,” he added.

    Freddy Ford, Bush’s chief of staff, told CNN the former president is also willing to receive the vaccine on camera.

    “A few weeks ago, President Bush asked me to let Dr Fauci and Dr Birx know that, when the time is right, he wants to do what he can to help encourage his fellow citizens to get vaccinated,” Ford told CNN.

    “First, the vaccines need to be deemed safe and administered to the priority populations. Then, President Bush will get in line for his, and will gladly do so on camera.”

    Clinton’s press secretary told CNN that he too is prepared to be filmed as he takes the vaccine.

    “President Clinton will definitely take a vaccine as soon as available to him, based on the priorities determined by public health officials,” Angel Urena said. “And he will do it in a public setting if it will help urge all Americans to do the same.”

  3. orlando sentinel editorial board:

    The COVID-19 cavalry is on the horizon. Scientists have produced vaccines in record time and there’s an end in sight to the pandemic catastrophe.
    Now all you have to do is take the shot.
    That should be obvious, but it seems researchers needed a second vaccine to attack the virus of suspicion, paranoia and misinformation that threatens to derail the project.
    “To beat this pandemic, we also have to defeat the parallel pandemic of distrust,” said Francesco Rocca, president of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies.
    Polls show about 60% of Americans are willing to take the vaccine. That’s a problem. In order to achieve herd immunity and snuff out the virus, about 70% of the population must be vaccinated.
    That’s about 230 million Americans, but vaccines aren’t 100% effective. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines average about 95% efficacy.
    That means about 240 million people in the U.S. need to take it. In Florida, herd immunity through a vaccine will require inoculating about 16 million people.
    You need to be one of them. You need to put aside the conspiracy theories, historical suspicion and apprehensions that come with a new cure.
    […]
    Like just about everything else these days, the COVID-19 vaccine has been politicized. The right is wary of masks, shutdowns and other health edicts.
    The left turned the vaccine into a talking point. In the vice president debate, Kamala Harris said she’d take it if Dr. Anthony Fauci said to.
    “But if Donald Trump tells us that we should take it,” Harris said, “then I’m not taking it.”
    The demagoguery is a disservice to the medical community. It took an astounding amount of brainpower and organization it took to produce a vaccine in 10 months.
    Pfizer submitted the first application for vaccine authorization on Nov. 20 after trials on 44,000 study patients. The Food and Drug Administration had 150 people working around the clock investigating that data.
    An independent committee reviewed those findings. All the documents were made public before Thursday’s hearing. A final go-ahead is expected in a few days.
    “We realize there is an issue in the U.S. around vaccine hesitancy. There have been concerns raised about the speed with which Covid-19 vaccines have been developed,” FDA Commissioner Stephen M. Hahn told the Wall Street Journal.
    The only discernible flaw in Operation Warp Speed is its name. The partnership between government and Big Pharma expedited a cure, but no testing corners were cut in the process.
    “This will meet our gold standard of safety and efficacy that the American people have come to trust,” Hahn said.
    […]
    Obama, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush have said they’ll go on TV and take the vaccine to help promote its acceptance.
    And there’s good news for Vice President-elect Harris. Fauci is ready to give her a prescription.
    “I promise you, I will take the vaccine,” he said. “And I will recommend that my family take the vaccine.”
    […]
    The good news is a light now flickers at the end of the tunnel. Let’s hope the vaccine is strong enough to cure the ignorance surrounding it.

  4. And, don’t cha know, SFB will be somewhere saying that we don’t know what’s in the prez club vaccines.  Could be water. We don’t know.   
    I will happily take it and hope that it works for me/no bad side effects.  I’d still prefer the Dolly Parton, since it doesn’t require super-cold storage nor a double dose.  I’ll take it when it’s my turn.
    I didn’t believe in flu shots until I was 27 and about died from the stuff.  Now, I want all the goodies available.  
    TT  – It’s time to hunker down even more, if possible.  
     

  5. vax sticks and pricks may break my skin

    and masks will never hurt me

    but they who’d shun each one of those

    could bring the virus to me.

  9. WE switched threads before I could post my intended final comment on the Perdue thread, so here it is:
    Phuck Perdue.
     
    I heard the DC prosecutor and thought he had a pretty good take on the SFB ballroom rental – if another nonprofit rented the room for $5000 the same day for a breakfast meeting, $175,000 for the Dumbass campaign seems to be above “fair market” for the room, which is what the email or text Ivanka produced reflected her directing the staff to negotiate. 

    Hah!, just listened to the clip above – same one I heard earlier this morning.
     

  10. patd….   Ha!…  isn’t it funny to think of men saying the same thing that women have been saying for years.
     I’ll take whatever vaccine is offered to me.  This is the first year I got “the senior” flu shot…  my arm felt like it was gonna fall off for about 3 days.  But I’d take it again!

  12. There’s someone in town that always has at least 3 Golden Retrievers around.  About 5 years ago a kitten wandered into her yard just before a big snowstorm.  Mary…  being the kind hearted person she is…  took it in.  She named it Chance…  and now it’s the love of her life and she says the cat rules the house.    Take good care of them kitties!

  14. NYTimes via msn:

    WASHINGTON — The House on Friday passed sweeping legislation that would decriminalize marijuana and expunge nonviolent marijuana-related convictions, as Democrats sought to roll back and compensate for decades of drug policies that have disproportionately affected low-income communities of color.

    The 228-164 vote to approve the measure was bipartisan, and it was the first time either a chamber of Congress had ever endorsed the legalization of cannabis. The bill would remove the drug from the Controlled Substances Act and authorize a 5 percent tax on marijuana that would fund community and small business grant programs to help those most impacted by the criminalization of marijuana.

    The legislation is, for now, almost certainly doomed in the Republican-led Senate, where that party’s leaders have derided it as a superficial distraction from the work of passing coronavirus relief, as lawmakers inched toward bipartisan compromise after spending months locked in an impasse.

    But the bill’s passage in the House amounted to a watershed moment decades in the making for advocates of marijuana legislation, and it laid out an expansive federal framework for redressing the racial disparities in the criminal justice system exacerbated by the war on drugs.

    [continues]

     

  15. wapo:

    President Trump’s campaign and its affiliated committees spent more than $1.1 million at Trump’s own properties in the last weeks of the 2020 campaign — continuing a pattern of self-enrichment in which Trump has converted $6.7 million from his campaign donors into revenue for his businesses since taking office, new campaign finance filings show.
    The filings from Trump Victory — a fundraising committee managed by Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee — show $1.06 million in new spending at Trump properties in September, October and November. Trump’s own campaign, which files a separate spending report, reported spending another $66,000.
    The filings don’t give much detail about the payments. Some appeared to be overnight stays at Trump hotels, costing a few hundred dollars each. There were several bills in excess of $100,000 for facility rental and catering — which likely included rentals of ballrooms for fundraisers or meetings at Trump properties. But the forms don’t say which Trump property was rented, or when.
    Neither the Trump campaign nor the Trump Organization responded to requests for comment Friday.
    Trump visited his own properties nine times in the last weeks of his campaign: He held fundraisers at his golf clubs in Bedminster, N.J., and Doral, Fla.; announced endorsements at his hotel in Las Vegas; and spent nights at the Las Vegas and Doral properties, as well as his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., between campaign stops.
    Those trips were the final stops in a long series of trips that allowed Trump to convert campaign donations into revenue for his own company — which has struggled with empty rooms, lost customers and declining revenue at some properties since he took office. Trump’s first 2020 fundraiser, held back in June 2017, was at his hotel in Washington.
    After that, Trump visited his own properties 37 more times for events tied to his own campaign, the RNC or super PACs that supported him, according to a Washington Post count. At these events, he could play a dual role: both candidate and caterer, using his campaign funds to pay his business for his stay. Campaign-law experts say these payments likely do not violate the law, as long as Trump’s business doesn’t overcharge his campaign.
    [continues]

  16. NYTimes:

    […intro to little known population of native americans in GA…]
    But nearly 150,000 Native Americans still live in Georgia, by the Native voting rights group Four Directions’s estimate. They receive few government services and tend not to participate in nontribal elections, both because they face structural barriers — like hard-to-reach polling places and lack of voter ID — and because of the mistrust built by brutality and broken promises. Of the estimated 100,000 who are of voting age, only about 15,000 are registered to vote.
    Organizers and tribal leaders recognize that if even a few thousand more Native Americans were inspired and able to vote in Georgia, they could play a meaningful political role in a closely divided state where two runoff elections on Jan. 5 will decide which party controls the Senate. Buoyed by remarkable Native American turnout in other states last month, advocates are trying to make that happen at breakneck speed.
    Ms. McCormick recently spoke with OJ Semans, a co-founder of Four Directions, which is nonpartisan. They agreed to begin a get-out-the-vote campaign with two other state-recognized tribes, the Cherokee of Georgia and the Georgia Tribe of Eastern Cherokee, and to press the Senate candidates — Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, both Republicans, and their Democratic challengers, Jon Ossoff and the Rev. Raphael Warnock — to address issues important to Native Americans.
    Increasing turnout among members of a marginalized community in a month is a tall order, and the deadline to register to vote in the runoffs is even sooner: Dec. 7. The foundations that groups like Four Directions have spent years building in other states — the networks of volunteers and relationships with tribes — are not so well established in Georgia, and Native Americans there are not as heavily concentrated on tribal land.
    But the examples other states set this year could provide a road map, even if the reward is farther off than January.
    [continues with those other state examples helping biden turnout]
    Ms. McCormick, the chief of the Lower Muskogee Creek Tribe in Georgia, said she hoped that politicians would take note if Native Americans voted in the runoffs in larger numbers, and that they would develop policies to help Native communities in return.
    That could mean reversing a Department of Housing and Urban Development rule that effectively restricts HUD funding to Georgia tribes; increasing education funding and access to health care; and recognizing tribes like Georgia’s federally.
    Four Directions is already knocking on doors in Atlanta, where some of Georgia’s Native Americans live, and tribal leaders will help identify members who live outside the tribes’ main communities.Next week, the group will send a policy questionnaire to all four Senate candidates, in hopes that the responses will help voters make their decisions and hammer home how federal policy can affect their lives.
    “We’re going to bring Native issues to the incumbents and to the candidates,” Mr. Semans said. “Whether they want to hear it or not.”

  17. D’ump does GA by  wonkette :

    With Georgia wingnuts all ready to throw rotten peaches at state leaders for betraying Donald Trump and letting Joe Biden win, the Great Man himself is flying to the state Saturday for a great big superspreader slob picnic. Ostensibly, he’s going there to urge people to get out and vote for Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, but plenty of state GOP leaders are worried he’s just as likely to spend the rally griping about the election outcome and insisting the vote was rigged. Gee, ya think?

    Allen Peake, a former state legislator, told Politico he hopes Trump will make the case for Republicans to turn out to vote for Loeffler and Perdue in the Jan. 5 runoffs, and that he won’t put on a “peripheral sideshow of whining and complaining and making baseless accusations.” Haha, you are a real dreamer, Mr. Peake! He went on to acknowledge, “But that’s kind of been his mode for the past four years. I don’t think he will change. So I’m very concerned about this on Saturday.”

    Let me tell you, we are all very very concerned that the paranoia and disinformation might lead many Georgia Trump supporters to stay home. What a great shame it would be if the GOP’s non-monogamous relationship with reality came back to bite it on the ass, leading to wins for Democratic challengers Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. We would probably be sad to see the party get its comeuppance, you bet.

    [it goes on in its usual colorful way]

  18. another wonkette beauty:

    Weep for Lord Hairball, husband of Lady Hairball, a partner in the Trump-defending law firm of Wackass, Jackass, Windsock and Hairballs. Forsooth he has been banished from his favorite social club for elites!

    That’s right, Joe diGenova got kicked out of the Gridiron Club in DC, which is an old fancy schmancy club for journalists and whoever they fuckin’. As the Washington Post explains, diGenova wouldn’t have probably been in it, anyway, if it weren’t for his dulcet singing voice.

    […]

    “We were dismayed by his comments and we felt that they were, on top of everything else, just antithetical to what the club is about,” said club president Craig Gilbert, the Washington bureau chief for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “It’s a social club — we’re all about fellowship and good will.”

    […]

    Though diGenova says he has “no ill will” toward the Gridiron Club, and literally said, “it’s their club, and I’m just a roving minstrel” — that’s right, one of the lawyers working to help steal American democracy for Donald Trump is just a roving minstrel — he did offer this explanation for what had happened. Surprise, it is CANCEL CULTURE:

    “[W]e’re at a strange time in American history, and, I guess I was canceled.”

    Indeed, what has the world come to when you can’t get on the radio and say a highly respected public servant should be murdered with guns for refusing to help steal an election for a wannabe dictator who wants to continue being president even though he got the shit beat out of him with votes in the election? One might say it’s a “strange time in American history” when a wannabe dictator refuses to accept the results of an election wherein he got the shit beat out of him with votes!

    “Canceled.”

    We think we speak for literally everyone when we say fuck off, warbling hairball.

  20. SFB fired some of the DoD business board and installed corey lewindowski and one other cult member.  With kushy or one of the cult in Saudi or somewhere like that, you have to wonder what they are up to.  At least they cannot get too much screwed up in five weeks.
     
    It started in the West and now the House has passed a legalize mj bill.  I wonder if it will make it through the Senate in the next five weeks.

  21. the 19th news:

    Kellyanne Conway acknowledges ‘it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail’

    The former adviser to President Donald Trump reflects on his presidency, women voters and her own historic role in the campaign.
    […]
    “The president wants to exhaust all of his legal avenues, as he has made clear many times. His team is doing that, and that is his right,” Conway said in an interview with The 19th’s Washington correspondent, Amanda Becker, that aired Friday. “If you look at the vote totals in the Electoral College tally, it looks like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will prevail. I assume the electors will certify that and it will be official. We, as a nation, will move forward, because we always do.”
    Conway also pledged to work with “future administrations,” saying: “If there’s anything I can ever do to help … they can count on me.” 
    “You always need a peaceful transfer of democracy, no matter whose administration goes into whose administration,” she added.
    [continues]

  22. Covid-19 has been very busy in this week following Thanksgiving.
    Today, (and it’s mid afternoon), 178, 67 cases  and 2,115 deaths have been reported.

     Average deaths per day (7 day average) are at 1795, where we were in early May, and average new cases are now at 176,585..
    New daily reported cases rose 5.5% 
    New daily reported deathsrose19.5%
    Covid-related hospitalizations rose 11.6%
    Among reported tests, the positivity rate was 10.7%.
    The number of tests reported fell 6.2% 

    But how is Dumbass’ golf handicap doing?

  23. I think if Biden disrespects the marijuana community it is a big mistake.  Obama did that and I believe it cost him the youth vote in 2012.   It is a tiny beginning in terminating many useless laws whose only purpose is to harass non white people especially young people.

  24. KGC – I think Biden has a whole lot of people making sure he does not go 1996 on us.   Just as I think he is a one term president, it is that freedom that can allow him to act in less a defensive mode (typical Dem in DC thinking) and more as a centrist going liberal.

  25. The MJ decriminalization bill will die on December 31 and I’ll be surprised if it passed in the next congress.  If Dems don’t have the 50/50 split in the Senate with Kamala as the deciding vote, it has zero chance of passage, and even if we have the senate, the republicanos will filibuster it.  Biden can express his preference for such a bill but he has no power to make it happen.  One thing I can’t see is any effort by DOJ or DEA under Biden to enforce laws that are on the books for MJ possession.

  26. Drive-up vaccinations?  No.  Some don’t have cars.  What if you have a reaction and get stuck at the site?   What a mess. 

  27. 👍🏻 DACA’s back. 

    Thousands of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children are immediately eligible to apply for an Obama-era program that grants them work permits, a federal judge in New York ruled Friday.

    U.S. District Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis in Brooklyn said he was fully restoring the eight-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program to the days before the Trump administration tried to end it in September 2017. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security to post a public notice by Monday to accept first-time applications and ensure that work permits are valid for two years.

    Acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf had issued a memo in July reducing DACA recipients’ work permits to one year, but Garaufis ruled last month that Wolf had unlawfully ascended to the agency’s top job and vacated the memo.

    Continues …Bwahahahahahah….

    Phuck Dumbass 

     

  29. Work permits, but no jobs due to COVID.
     
    Not sure I will have a job in a month or so.   Everyone except the big guys (Amazon) and a few larger retailers  are ordering from us manufacturers like they were end users. Some are only taking special orders (not stocking anything) from folks kind enough to forego Amazon and buy from them.  I’ve never seen so many tiny, tiny orders.   
    My cousin in LA said half of the boutiques are out of business.  
    Walmart used to be the only devil in town.  Now, we have Amazon to contend with, too.   (Has Jeff Bezos done anything to help with COVID relief, testing, vaccines, etc.?) 

  31. Poobah, we’ll travel, but only our immediate family of 3 (plus our old dog), a whopping 90 minutes from home, no hotels, no restaurants. Just a different view out the back windows. 

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