One Tweet Description Of How Bad the Anti-Vaxxers Have Gotten To Make the Pandemic Worse

Yes, it's gotten this bad:

 

This is how bad the idjits fighting against vaccinations are behaving: they are abusing a *horse deworming* medication so much that the horse med stores NEED A FCKING PHOTO ID OF YOUR HORSE. /headdesk #GetVaccinated #COVIDIsNotOver https://t.co/Ymr00K9woA

— Witty Librarian In a Mask (@PaulWartenberg) August 29, 2021

"Sir, I'm gonna need to see your driver's license and an equestrian certificate from Secretariat Junior over there before I sell you this highly toxic horse medication to you."

I can remember when common over-the-counter drugs had to get moved behind the pharmacist's counter because those drugs could be used to make meth. Now we're worried about horse deworming meds that CLEARLY STATE THEY ARE NOT MEANT FOR HUMANS.

All because some con artist out there posted something on social media that this Ivermectin stuff is an "alternative" to the dreaded mRNA vaccines. And if it's not this dewormer stuff, it'll be something else promoted as a quick solution cure, and then something else, and then something after that, everything EXCEPT the vaccines that work all because the Contrarian nature of the Far Right mindset can NEVER accept something the "libs" are pushing as "good".

Gods. Our species IS going to die out from partisan stupidity.

How Low CAN We Go?

I used to have faith in my fellow human beings that there was some level of common sense to prevent the worst of what we can do to ourselves.

But in the wake of watching 62 million Americans buy into the trumpian BS, becoming willing accomplices in the Crime of the Century, my faith has been shattered. I still cannot comprehend how so many voters genuinely thought trump was a better choice than Hillary. And while I knew that a lot of the Far Right were hypocrites about faith and Christian grace, for so many of them to eagerly embrace a self-avowed pussy-grabber and greedhead in trump seems a betrayal of absolutely everything Jesus stands for.

I still cannot comprehend some of the progressives I know on Facebook and Twitter who openly argue that Hillary would have been just as bad a warmonger and ripoff artist as trump. They've become so convinced that Bernie could have won that they've blinded themselves to how bad trump really is.

Who thinks like that?

This is why this week is going to be so troubling. This Tuesday, Alabama will have their Special Election to fill a Senate seat.

The choice is between a Democrat in Doug Jones who's been an effective prosecutor, with a clear track record of civil rights defense and pragmatic policies that lean Center-Left on the spectrum. The kind of person you think rational Alabamans would support to lead their state into the 21st Century.

The other choice is Republican Roy Moore. The Roy Moore who openly proclaims himself God's Chosen eager to put the Ten Commandments on display as though that would enforce God's will, while violating half of those Commandments on a daily basis. Roy Moore, who openly contends that slavery was great, everyone liked it including the slaves, and shows every sign of wanting to bring those days back.  Roy Moore, who allegedly stalked and molested HIGH SCHOOL GIRLS when he was in his 30s. This is the kind of person who represents every worst aspect of Alabama and the Deep South, the long dark shadow of Slavery and Jim Crow that still haunts this region, combined with the sexist Patriarchy of Far Right religious views of women as playthings and breeders.

And there's every possibility enough Alabamans will close their eyes to everything WRONG about Roy Moore and vote for him.

All because the Conservative mindset of Alabamans excuses every sin a fellow Conservative - now Republican - could and did commit.

All because they've been ingrained over generations to HATE anything that reeks of liberal values that now associate with the Democratic Party.

All because there are enough of us who want everything to burn in the Hellfire that these Republican crooks and hypocrites will inflict on the entire world.

There may be, hopefully, a chance that Doug Jones wins, that enough Alabamans are repulsed by Moore's extremism and sins to turn away. But after what happened in 2016, I can't believe that.

We are so royally fucked, America.

And it's your damned fault, Republicans, for letting us sink this low.

You could have stopped all this. You could have shown some ethical standards and kept trump off the ticket in 2015 when he so clearly came out on a racist, hate-filled agenda. But now you're stuck, like the rest of us. And it's getting worse.

Moore shouldn't have won the primary earlier. You had a standard level evil-doing Hard Right candidate in Luther Strange, but he wasn't hate-filled enough and your own primary voters went with crazy asshat Moore.

And do you think Moore will be the lowest point?

Your voting base can now easily forgive PEDOPHILES as long as they are librul bashers. Your voting base will easily go for the most racist, most sexist, most insane candidate on the ticket because they've bought into your party's nihilistic views on governance.

But you can't control that. For all the dogma and certainty these Far Right candidates present, they will not recognize common sense in any way shape or form. They will pander to the most vicious instinct and destroy everything our nation - even things YOUR OWN PARTY respects - built up for the last 200 years.

Until the Republicans and their media enablers wake up to the damage these extremist candidates present, we are going to get the WORST OF THE WORST coming out of Alabama and every other hardcore Red State.

Gods help us.

We are so very royally fucked.

A Healthcare Replace Plan So Easy Even a Republican Can Do It

One of the people you really need to follow is Richard Mayhew over at Balloon Juice. He's an expert on the health care system: an insider with an insurance firm so he knows the rules and the consequences of what reform efforts can do.

He's recently posted stuff about how the Congressional Republicans are tripping over themselves trying to live up to their 6-year promise to REPEAL AND REPLACE Obama's health care reforms AKA ObamaCare, because the Republicans are suddenly realizing that both the Repeal process is messy and the Replace options few and far apart. Today's offering from Mayhew:

The first thing in health policy is to always follow the money.  Covering sick people means spending money.  The question is always how much money and who is spending that money.  We’ll know very quickly if there is an actual replacement plan that is way too heavily focused on HSAs but actually tries to provide some useful coverage to a reasonable number of Americans or if it is a Potemkin plan by looking at the top line CBO scoring of the expense of the coverage provisions.  This runs into a potential Norquist problem but the money is the big thing to review.

What exactly is a Norquist Problem? As Mayhew noted before, the Norquist Problem is "Republican orthodoxy that once a tax cut is passed it can never be re-enacted": A tax cut MUST REMAIN permanent even when it becomes obvious the government has to re-instate that tax to regain revenues to, you know, pay for shit.

So the Republicans are currently kicking themselves to come up with some way to make the Repeal AND Replace some kind of revenue-neutral deal, even though the "Cadillac Tax" that makes up some of the ACA's revenues will likely get cut (because ALL taxes on the rich are EVIL in the eyes of the Far Right).

As I noted in the comments to Mayhew's article today, there is actually a very simple plan that Republicans can enact. It covers a lot of areas, it gives Republicans an out, and it doesn't involve a lot of heavy lifting that these lazy-ass Republicans hate doing when it comes to legislation and governance.

My solution was this:

1) JUST FCKING FIX THE ACA SO YOU DON’T HAVE TO WASTE YOUR TIME DREAMING UP A HALF-ASSED PLAN THAT WON’T WORK. The fix involves granting every state a Public Option to encourage choice and competitive costs, and there should be a way of setting it up without an increase in taxes. The Republicans would have to live with that Cadillac tax, but they can come up with a rebrand on it to shill to the base.

2) Rename the revised ACA AmeriCare or RepubliCare so you can take the credit. This is the easiest part. A lot of Democrats will grumble about it but as long as this health care program exists Obama won't give a rat's ass that his name's no longer on it. JUST DON'T FCKING NAME IT AFTER TRUMP YOU BASTARDS.

3) Go on your fcking golf retreats with your lobbyist buddies for the rest of 2017. No stress, no muss, no heavy lifting. You Republican Congresscritters can go back to your 300-day vacation plans for the year. The wingnuts in the media may throw a hissy fit or two but they'll settle the fck down and resume hating on Democrats for 2018.

DONE. SEE HOW EASY IT CAN BE, REPUBLICANS?!

I swear we Moderates gotta do all the damn thinking around here. You should listen to us more.

The Rank Smell of a Great Sorrow Lies Over the Land

There is a great and harrowing despair in my soul today.

We are living in a land where fate supposes the possibility of a con artist like Trump could become President of the United States.

In spite of his many sins. In spite of his open hostility to minorities and women. In spite of his failures regarding foreign and financial policies. There is still going to be enough of our fellow Americans who will buy this con game. Worse, there are enough of our fellow Americans who KNOW - who have whispered among themselves in dark dreary corners away from the cameras - how dangerous and reckless this Trump could be but who STILL close their eyes and blind themselves all because they cannot accept any alternative: Because of their partisan habits to back Republican ideology at all hazards, because of the likelihood they themselves could profit from a Trump victory, because of their foolish hope that "maybe" Trump could be controlled.

But have we ever had a Presidential nominee be so openly toxic?

Yoni Appelbaum, on Trump's narcissism:

In 2016, Donald J. Trump mounted the stage, and told America that the nation is in crisis. That attacks on police and terrorism threaten the American way of life. That the United States suffers from domestic disaster, and international humiliation. That it is full of shuttered factories and crushed communities. That it is beset by “poverty and violence at home” and “war and destruction abroad.”

And he offered them a solution.

I am your voice, said Trump. I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order. He did not appeal to prayer, or to God. He did not ask Americans to measure him against their values, or to hold him responsible for living up to them. He did not ask for their help. He asked them to place their faith in him.

Does that not echo the cults of personality that have haunted nations scarred by dictatorships and tyrannies? Trump did not appeal to a broad, optimistic view of the nation that nearly every other Presidential nominee has offered on that stage. He did not appeal to the party, actually. Trump appealed to the fears, he appealed to the anger, he appealed to the delusions. And he offered himself up as the Great Savior for all these problems he claims besets us, as though no one else can do this.

Does not Trump's speech ignore the real world? He claims the United States is suffering at home and abroad despite evidence to the contrary. From Glenn Kessler and Michelle Ye Hee Lee at the Washington Post:

The dark portrait of America that Donald J. Trump sketched in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention is a compendium of doomsday stats that fall apart upon close scrutiny. Numbers are taken out of context, data is manipulated, and sometimes the facts are wrong.

When facts are inconveniently positive — such as rising incomes and an unemployment rate under 5 percent — Trump simply declines to mention them. He describes an exceedingly violent nation, flooded with murders, when in reality, the violent-crime rate has been cut in half since the crack cocaine epidemic hit its peak in 1991...

Throughout Kessler and Hee Lee's article they pick apart each of Trump's accusations and claims, spotting anecdote for what it is, and highlighting how Trump is getting the numbers on tax rates, immigration, and employment wrong. But Trump won't care. He will keep shilling those statements because he needs to keep convincing voters that things are worse than they are and that HE can save us.

It's been said before that the Republicans do not live in the real world. In RepublicanLand, the liberals are destroying everything and Obama is a Secret Muslim selling us out to terrorists and corporations need tax cuts and deregulations before they can hire everybody back (without any healthcare benefits or minimum wage requirements). Now, they have Trump putting his trademark name on that property, without caring how Trump's brand never really sells and collapses into bankruptcy before any buildings are even started.

And this isn't even getting into the shitshow Trump threatens to bring to our foreign policy needs and what he threatens to do with our existing alliances that have STABILIZED - in spite of the War on Terror - our world for more than a half-century. Adam Silverman's article linked here should wake people up to the danger Trump presents.

And of course, the media elites will swarm and applaud because they have to, lest Trump and the Far Right throw another conniption about how "biased" and "unfair" the "liberal media" will be. So of course the pundits will line up and say "well that wasn't TOO EVIL a speech" or will argue that Trump has finally pivoted to the Center and can actually win in Nove... cough cough BLLLAARRRRRGGGG... Jesus, I can't even write that without vomiting in disgust.

No. Just no. Not ever. Not Trump. NOT TRUMP.

How the HELL is Trump even polling above 35 percent? How the HELL IS TRUMP EVEN POLLING ABOVE THE CRAZIFICATION MARK AT 27 PERCENT?!?!

/despair

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, DEMOCRATS. Every single registered Democrat in the nation needs to show up this November 8th and VOTE against Trump. I don't care if you've got a grudge against Hillary. Half that shit about her isn't even REAL, so why the hell are those lies bothering you? JUST VOTE FOR HER DAMMIT.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, NO-PARTY AFFILIATES. Every single one of us in the nation needs to show up this November 8th and VOTE against Trump. I'd prefer it was a vote FOR Hillary, but the key thing here is FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT VOTE TRUMP.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, LIBERTARIANS. Christ, I can't believe I'm asking you guys to show up. But damn, your guy Gary Johnson is at LEAST reasonable and sane compared to Trump.

GET THE DAMN VOTE OUT, GREENS. I'd rather you vote for Hillary, because your demographic pulls away votes from Dems more than Republicans, but the key thing again is DAMMIT DO NOT VOTE TRUMP.

And Republicans? I'D RATHER YOU STAY AT HOME THIS NOVEMBER 8TH. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU THINKING, VOTING THIS CON ARTIST INTO THE RACE?! DAMN YOU. If you have the nerve to show up to vote, fine, so be it. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS SANE AND HOLY AND REAL PLEASE DO NOT VOTE TRUMP. Vote Johnson, if anything. Just please NOT TRUMP. Not ever Trump.

This shit is insane and scary and wrong.

A Winter Grayer Than Before

And in despair I bowed my head;
"There is no peace on earth," I said:
 "For hate is strong,
 And mocks the song
Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"
- "Christmas Bells," Longfellow

Thing about Christmastime, of December and the coming of winter.  It's a season of falling into the Gray Mood.  They call it the Winter Blues but it's really all Gray: the sky is gray, the ground is dead, the people are dour and burdened while the pressure builds to be festive and light-ful.

This year feels grayer than before.

Part of it is due to witnessing yet another disastrous midterm election.  Getting stuck in a state full of partisan morans voting that damn MEDICARE FRAUD back into the governor's office.  Banging my head against the desktop as voter turnout dropped to its lowest level since World War II.

Part of it is watching any semblance of justice in my own nation - land of the free and home of the brave - get flushed down a toilet as violent cops get let off for shooting unarmed teens and using illegal choke holds on guys whose only crime was not submitting to another round of public humiliation.

Part of it is realizing that the current political and economic landscape is about to get darker and nastier.  There's been buzz about a shutdown over Obama's attempts to reform immigration policy via his executive order powers.  There's concerns of a shutdown if there's a fight over a budget proposal that's top-heavy with corporate tax cuts and public sector spending cuts.

There's the growing realization that no matter the injustice of it, the insanity of it, the criminality of it... the Republicans will not rule even if they have the political power, they will ruin all.  They will twist the laws of the states they control to make it harder to vote, harder to complain, harder to stop them commit acts of graft and corruption.  Why listen to the critics or even the experts when there's no accountability for the sins they commit?

It's gray outside right now.  It's going to get darker, and I worry we won't see the sunshine any time soon.

A Slight Follow-up To Name Changing

So I asked my fellow Coatesian Lost Battalion Horders about suggested new titles for this blog.

Wartenblog?

/headdesk

(four more blogs to 400)

UPDATE (3/23/13): Good news, everybody!  Wartenblog is already taken!  In both English AND German!  Bwhahaha. Wait, is that really French language...?

(with the current Presidential blogging, now up to 397, three more blogs to go)