Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger announced Friday that he would not seek a seventh term in the House, a development that came hours after Illinois’ Democratic legislature passed a new congressional map that would have placed him in the same seat as fellow GOP Rep. Darrin LaHood. That would have likely been an impossible primary for Kinzinger, who was one of just 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Donald Trump in January. (One of his compatriots, Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, announced his own retirement from Congress in September.)
We may not have seen the last of Kinzinger, though, as he said, “This isn’t the end of my political future, but the beginning.” The outgoing congressman didn’t rule out running for the Senate or governor earlier this year, but he’d still face a difficult task winning over a Trump-worshipping electorate before he could concentrate on trying to prevail in the general election in this very blue state.
It’s almost hard to believe, given the circumstances of his departure from the House, but Kinzinger was elected as part of the 2010 Tea Party wave and, with the backing of his party leadership, won a primary two years later against a fellow incumbent. Kinzinger first sought elected office in 1998 when, as a college sophomore, he unseated a Democratic member of the McLean County Board. (He would recount that he was inspired to run after someone initially suggested the idea as a joke.) Kinzinger later enlisted in the Air Force after the 9/11 attacks and went on to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Kinzinger, who had left elected office in 2003, formed an exploratory committee in 2009 to take on freshman Democratic Rep. Debbie Halverson in what was then numbered the 11th District, though he couldn’t formally announce until his deployment ended in the summer. Halverson had flipped this historically Republican seat in the Chicago suburbs in a 58-34 landslide as Barack Obama was winning 53-45 here, and while she didn’t look vulnerable at first, Kinzinger released a poll showing him beating her as early as March of the next year.
The new congressman couldn’t rest for long, though, as the Democratic legislature drew him into the same safely red north-central Illinois seat, now numbered the 16th District, as 10-term GOP Rep. Don Manzullo. Manzullo represented more of the new district than Kinzinger and had a more conservative reputation.
However, in an unusual turn of events, party leaders like Speaker John Boehner, Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy, and especially Majority Leader Eric Cantor donated to or outright backed the more junior Kinzinger (the media reported during the campaign that Manzullo had said years before that Cantor, who is Jewish, could not be “saved,” a remark Manzullo’s team denied), while conservative outside groups stood by Manzullo.
The campaign turned into a generational battle between Manzullo and Kinzinger—who was all of 14 years old when his opponent was first elected to Congress—though they also spent plenty of time arguing the other was insufficiently conservative. And in a line that foreshadowed Kinzinger’s later career, one Tea Party leader declared, “Kinzinger jumped on the Tea Party wave but once he got elected he didn’t do a damn thing for us.” The usually laid-back Manzullo surprised many observers by running an aggressive campaign, but Kinzinger prevailed 54-46.
Kinzinger quickly became entrenched, but his willingness to criticize left him with a difficult relationship with the administration. Kinzinger voted against impeaching Trump in 2019, but he stood out the next year as one of the few Republicans willing to call out Trump’s lies about the election. Things escalated after the Jan. 6 attack, though, and this time, the congressman supported Trump’s removal. Several Republicans announced primary challenges soon after, but his fate wasn’t truly sealed until the legislature passed its new map late Thursday.
The infamous Liberty University is making headlines again, this time for allegedly punishing students who report sexual assault. According to ProPublica, students who report rape are in violation of the school’s code of conduct, known as the Liberty Way, and as a result, these students have been not only threatened but penalized in some form including finding them guilty for premarital sex and drinking alcohol.
ProPublica spoke to more than 50 former students in addition to receiving records from over a dozen cases. At least three students who spoke to the outlet said they were asked to sign reports upon reporting their assault, with the form stating that they recognized they could be penalized for breaking the school’s ethics code, which barred alcohol and premarital sex.
“I remember thinking, ‘What? Are you kidding me?’” A former student said. “‘I could get in trouble for coming forward and reporting?’”
Students were also convinced not to file charges or speak about the issue despite staff being legally required to report conversations to the Title IX office.
“I feel like Liberty bullied me into silence after what happened to me,” another former student identified as Diane Stargel told ProPublica. “I’ve always regretted that I never got my day in court. But at least now I can stand up and say, ‘Yeah, that happened to me.’”
Additionally, important aspects of the case files were removed, including photos, because they were too “explicit.”
One student, identified as Elizabeth Axley, told ProPublica that after being raped in 2017, she took pictures of her bruised body for her case file. The photos were initially removed.
“I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach,” Axley recalled. “I had been relying on them all these months to take my evidence into account when considering my case, and it wasn’t even in my file.”
After she resubmitted them, the committee still determined her alleged rapist was “not responsible” for the assault because of a “preponderance of the evidence.”
Due to the policies in place, some students even told ProPublica they did not go forward with reporting their assault because “I knew I would face the blame for putting myself in that situation.”
But this isn’t the first report detailing the horrendous way the university addressed allegations of rape. In July, at least a dozen anonymous former students filed a lawsuit against the university, noting the university’s lack of care towards sexual assault victims. Additionally, the lawsuit argued that the “public and repeated retaliation against women who did report their victimization” made for a dangerous campus environment.
Former and current students aren’t the only ones speaking up on the injustices: Amongst those speaking up against Liberty University’s policies and treatment of survivors is former Senior Vice President of Communications Scott Lamb. Lamb referred to the school’s inability to speak up and report an assault on campus as a “conspiracy of silence.” He was fired earlier this month after first bringing up the school’s inability to address sexual assault internally.
“Concerns about sexual assault would go up the chain and then die,” Lamb said.
Lamb is also suing the university for his allegedly being fired in retaliation for calling out officials on their bad handling of reports of sexual assault and harassment. According to The Washington Post, he filed a lawsuit Monday arguing that the university’s policies were not only a breach of Title IX, but discriminatory on the basis of sex.
The university obviously responded by claiming Lamb was a “liar” and was fired because of managerial review. However, Lamb himself tweeted a statement saying his lawsuit “alleges that Liberty University has been behaving badly and has drifted from the original mission.”
Of course, despite these reports, Liberty University is more concerned about elections and supporting conservatives who allow its university to prosper than working on addressing the allegations brought to light.
ProPublica’s report not only highlights Liberty University’s lack of concern for sexual assault, but sheds light on a broader issue of how evangelical institutions handle these situations. According to Mother Jones, Liberty University is not the only evangelical institution under fire: At least 11 women who attended Moody Bible Institute in Chicago said school administrators shamed them after they reported being assaulted. Reports like this allow action to not only be taken, but survivors with similar experiences to speak out. We can only hope that as more cases come to light, schools take these allegations more seriously.
We can’t count on any single part of the Build Back Better deal being finalized in Congress until the votes are taken, but David Dayen has found one important and heartening provision in the draft language: a key piece of the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. If this goes makes it into the final version of the bill and is passed, it would be a big advance for workers in the United States.
The proposed language would dramatically increase fines on any employer who commits an unfair labor practice by threatening workers’ jobs, firing them, or otherwise coercing them away from joining a union. The new fines could be up to $50,000 for a first violation and up to $100,000 for repeat violations in which workers are fired.
The National Labor Relations Act says very clearly that workers have the right to organize and it is illegal for employers to threaten or fire them for doing so (or to bribe them not to). That’s the law. But it’s broken all the time. Unfair labor practice charges are filed in more than 40% of union drives, with one in five union drives leading to an unfair labor practice charge specifically about someone being fired for their protected union activity. One of the reasons this law is broken so often is that the penalties for doing so are pathetically small.
What does “pathetically small” mean? If a company is—usually after a long process—found to have illegally fired a worker, it will be forced to rehire that worker and pay back pay, MINUS anything the worker earned during the time they were fired.
Labor expert Dave Kamper highlights the tiny cost to an employer of being found to have committed an unfair labor practice in contrast to the potential costs of racial or gender or other forms of discrimination. A few years ago, AutoZone was ordered to pay $185 million in a pregnancy discrimination case. Tesla was recently ordered to pay $137 million in a racial discrimination judgement.
Firing someone for trying to organize a union is entirely illegal, but here’s why companies do it all the time:
That’s chump change. The simple truth is that it frequently makes economic (if not moral) sense for a company to fire workers trying to organize a union rather than there being a union. This provision changes the calculus entirely. 6/
Workers need a real deterrent. If this provision of the PRO Act gets passed as part of a reconciliation package (and then is enforced), they’ll get it. No, it’s not $100 million or more, but $50,000 or $100,000 for an unfair labor practice just might make managers think twice before breaking the law by firing or threatening a worker over their union activity.
More than a third of U.S. workers—36%—now say their employer is requiring all of its employees to be vaccinated if they don’t qualify for a medical exemption, according to a Gallup tracking poll. That number has quadrupled since July, when just 9% of workers said their employers were requiring them to get vaccinated.
Another 39% say their employer is encouraging them to get vaccinated without making it a requirement. That number has declined from 62% in July as more employers began implementing mandates. Since May, about a quarter of U.S. employees have consistently said their employer has no vaccine policy.
In September, President Joe Biden began pressing companies with more than 100 employees to either require vaccinations or routine testing of their workforce. At the same time, Biden signed orders requiring all federal workers and contractors to get vaccinated, with opt-outs for medical and religious reasons.
Vaccine mandates have also been shown to be highly effective at convincing the vast majority of a workforce to get inoculated. In less than two months, United Airlines succeeded in vaccinating 99.7% of its roughly 67,000 employees after implementing a mandate in August.
According to the Gallup survey, 56% of U.S. workers favor vaccine requirements while just 37% oppose them. Support has grown 10 points since May, when 46% of respondents said they favored mandates, while opposition has remained stagnant.
So not only do mandates work, they have also grown in popularity the more they have been implemented.
The expert panel advising the Food and Drug Administration has finally recommended authorization for Pfizer-BioNTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children ages 5 to 11, a much hoped for and major development for millions of families and children in the United States.
This step toward even more widespread inoculations to the deadly respiratory virus that has killed more than 749,000 Americans is expected to be joined by a full authorization for use from the FDA.
From there, the next step is for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to approve the guidance as well—and they are expected to—and then, some 28 million children according to estimates by the White House will finally be eligible for immunization.
FDA acting commissioner Janet Woodcock lauded the development.
“As a mother and physician, I know that parents, caregivers, school staff and children have been waiting for today’s authorization. Vaccinating younger children against COVID-19 will bring us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy,” Woodcock said. “Our comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of the data pertaining to the vaccine’s safety and effectiveness should help assure parent and guardians that this vaccine meets our high standards.”
According to the FDA, in test groups, the response to the vaccine in children 5 to 11 was comparable to the response found in young adults ages 16 through 25. Pfizer’s vaccine was reported as 90.7% effective and as far as safety Is concerned, the regulatory body highlights that among the 3,100 children age 5 to 11 years old that were part of an ongoing study, “no serious side effects have been detected.”
The most commonly reported side effects during trials included redness at the injection site and soreness. Symptoms such as headaches, chills, nausea and muscle and joint pain were also reported and like many adults have experienced over the last several months, most side effects were reported after the second dose of vaccine was administered.
“Side effects were generally mild to moderate in severity and occurred within two days after vaccination and most went away within one to two days,” the FDA said in a statement Friday.
The FDA’s advisory panel voted 17-0 to approve the recommendation for use with one abstention, according to The New York Times.
Slightly diluted in strength but not efficacy, the Pfizer dose for this age group will be just one-third as strong as the vaccine delivered to individuals age 12 and up.
This July, primary care pediatrician Claire McCarthy wrote for Harvard Health that roughly 1,000 cases of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscles, or pericarditis, which is inflammation of the tissue forming a sac around the heart, were recorded in adolescent and adult vaccine recipients.
“Millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine have been given, and there have only been 1,000 cases of heart inflammation. Doing the math, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) notes that every million doses given, there have been 67 cases of heart inflammation in boys 12 to 17 (nine in girls of that age group), 56 in those aged 18 to 24 (six in girls), and 20 in males 25 to 29 (three in girls). That means the risk is quite low,” McCarthy wrote.
In a tweet, Colorado Democratic Rep. Diana DeGette summed up the development succinctly.
“This is a huge milestone in our fight to end this pandemic,” she wrote. “Once the CDC signs off, shots could be available to this important age group in the coming days.”
In addition to the recommendation for use in young children, the FDA also announced Friday that it has authorized a change for how the vaccine is manufactured. A different “buffer” will be used in the vaccine that helps maintain the drug’s pH levels. This will aid greater stability.
“This new formulation is more stable at refrigerated temperatures for longer periods of time, permitting greater flexibility for vaccination providers,” the FDA said.
The buffer is used commonly in many other FDA-approved vaccines and that includes products intended for consumption by children. It also presented zero safety concerns to experts at the agency.
“Whatever else has happened in your life today, I bequeath you this little warm fuzziness to hold in your heart: The Nazis are representing themselves in court, acting as their own lawyers. That always works out great. Good for them. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch.” —Rachel Maddow, commenting on news that American Nazi Richard Spencer says his legal process has been so “very stressful and very costly” that he’s resorted to representing himself in court.
“Former White House…I want to say garbage man?…Steve Bannon was held in contempt of Congress. But this is what Bannon wants. It plays into his whole persecuted messiah complex, though Bannon is similar to Jesus in that he looks like he’s been dead for three days.” —Colin Jost, SNL
Continued…
“Donald Trump announced the launch of his own social media network he’s calling Truth Social. But most people know it by its original name: The National Sex Offender Registry.” —Michael Che, SNL
“While visiting an elementary school in New Jersey, President Biden stopped to help a student pick up pieces of their block tower after it had fallen over. Or he tried to, but Joe Manchin kept getting in the way.” —Seth Meyers
“Rep. Mo Brooks washed his hands of any involvement with Capitol riot organizers, but said ‘his staff might have been involved.’ Way to throw your team under the campaign bus. Reminds us of Harry Truman’s famous plaque…
—Stephen Colbert
“The constant refrain we hear from cops every time they kill an unarmed Black person is, ‘They should have complied with the law, because as long as you comply, things will supposedly go well.’ But that only seems to work one way. Because when officers are asked to follow simple rules or face consequences, a not-insignificant amount of them flip their shit. So you know what? If an officer wants to quit over this [vaccine mandate], fucking let them. Let the individuals who clearly don’t care about public safety stop being in charge of public safety.” —John Oliver
“Teachers in Texas shouldn’t be teaching an opposing view of the Holocaust in schools. That’s Facebook’s job. Stay in your lane!” —Trevor Noah
Every October I’m kidnapped and forced to scare birds at a local pumpkin patch. —Conan O’Brien via Twitter
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Friday, October 29, 2021
Note: Tomorrow is National Candy Corn Day, and you must resist the efforts by the Democrat Party—aided and abetted by Big Skittle, Big Reese, and Big M&M—to win their War on Halloween by eating fistfuls of candy corn now before you get murdered by Hillary Clinton, assisted by illegals from the caravan, in a socialist re-education camp run by Soros, AOC, and leaky Adam Schiff. Also buy lots of gold and Mr. Pillow pillows and whatever Pat Boone is selling today. Or, again, and I can’t stress this enough, you’ll be murdered.
—National GOP Candy Corn Council, Lauren Boebert, self-appointed honorary president
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By the Numbers:
2022 Obamacare enrollment starts Monday.
Days ’til election day 2021: 4
Days ’til 2022 Obamacare enrollment begins: 3
Minimum number of LGBTQ+ candidates who ran or are running for office in 2021, a 7% increase over the last odd-numbered election year of 2019: 410
Increase in private-sector wages in September from a year earlier: 4.6%
Number of sites California is getting ready for administering 1.2 million coronavirus vaccines to kids age 5-11: 4,000
New hourly minimum wage at Costco as of next Monday, up a buck: $17
Rank of Skittles, Reese’s Cups, and M&Ms among most popular Halloween candy, according to Candystore.com: #1, #2, #3
Age of The Electric Company and Queen/David Bowie’s Under Pressure, respectively, as of last Tuesday: 50, 40
CHEERS to parameter-mentum! Big news on the Build Back Better bill. We have a framework, people. An outline, a blueprint, a floor plan, a skeleton, a summary, a superstructure, a scaffold, a dais, a latticework, a thumbnail sketch, a ground plan, a rough draft…WE FINALLY HAVE BUILD BACK BETTER CLIFFS NOTES, PEOPLE!!! You can read about what’s in the $1.75 trillion wish list here, but here are a few nuggets that have survived:
» Daycare for those among us with the least-developed brains, complete with nappy time, show ‘n tell, and chocolate milk at noon
Lots in the BBB bill for children!
» Universal pre-K classes, including the basics on forming letters and words, and coherent ideas
» Financial assistance to buy hearing devices that allow for more effective listening
» Extra assistance for mental health issues
» Assistance for those who can’t properly dress and groom themselves
» Anger management classes
And that’s just for the Republicans in Congress. Wait’ll you see what the rest of us are getting!
JEERS to putting lipstick on a pig. The skies opened yesterday over Planet Earth as our supreme overlord Mark Zuckerberg poked the unwashed masses. Seems he’s shaking up his empire, and oh boy are things going to be different soon. You won’t believe it. Instead of just owning a shitbag operation that profits off of hate, fear, and disinformation called Facebook, we’re getting a brand-new shitbag operation that profits off of hate, fear, and disinformation called Meta. All kneel and praise it. Or else you’ll be vaporized. Did I mention Meta is laser-based?
CHEERS to the fed-up female. On today’s date in 1966, the National Organization for Women (NOW) held its first conference and adopted its original Statement of Purpose in Washington D.C. That purpose: to help reduce the extent to which men are allowed to act like pigs…
We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.
A lot of women have worn down a lot of shoe leather marching for NOW. And they’re just getting started.
The purpose of NOW is to take action to bring women into full participation in the mainstream of American society now, exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men.
We believe the time has come to move beyond the abstract argument, discussion and symposia over the status and special nature of women which has raged in America in recent years; the time has come to confront, with concrete action, the conditions that now prevent women from enjoying the equality of opportunity and freedom of choice which is their right, as individual Americans, and as human beings.
Today NOW is “the largest organization of feminist grassroots activists in the United States” with “actions and positions on the issues that are principled, uncompromising and often ahead of their time.” We completely agree. But as usual, ladies, tonight I’m still gonna open the door for ya.
CHEERS to #2. And happy 286th birthday to John Adams, born October 30, 1735. A few toasts from his colleagues:
“He’s actually insane!”
—Sec. of War James McHenry
“Sometimes absolutely mad!”
—Ben Franklin
I visited Adams’ tomb in a church basement in Quincy, Mass. I reached out to touch it. He slapped my hand.
“He is vain, irritable, and a bad calculator of the force and probable effect of the motives which govern men.”
—Thomas Jefferson
I’ll tell in a trice-
‘Tis old Daddy Vice
Who carries of pride an ass-load;
Who turns up his nose,
Wherever he goes,
With vanity swelled like a toad.
—Rep. John Page of Virginia
Okay, well, that was fun. Pay your respects here. But watch your words—he still thinks the Alien and Sedition Acts are in effect.
CHEERS to home vegetation. If a poltergeist doesn’t suck us into the TV first (“Come into the light, Billeh! We haz teh candy corns!”), we might get some decent cathode-ray-tubage in this weekend.
Game 3 is tonight.
Tonight after Chris Hayes, and Rachel Maddow scare us to death with the day’s news on MSNBC, HBO’s Real Time features guests Sen. Chris Coons, Caitlan Flanigan of The Atlantic, and unrepentant asshole zombie Sean Spicer. New movies and home video releasesinclude Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch and Last Night in Soho. Game three of the World Series is tonight (Fox), with the Houston Astros tied with The Atlanta Braves one game apiece. (Game 4 is tomorrow night and game 5 is Sunday.) The NFL schedule is here, the NBA schedule is here, and the NHL schedule is here.
Owen Wilson hosts an encore edition of SNL. On 60 Minutes: the wives of Nicaraguan political prisoners speak out. And HBO sweeps the rest of Sunday night with a new episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm at 10 and another chorus of “Welcome, welcome, welcome!” on an all-new edition of John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight.
Now here’s your Sunday morning lineup:
Meet the Press: Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm; Terry McAuliffe; Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger; the pundit “round” table will be the same shape as Chuck Todd’s dumb head Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Sunday shows brought to you this week by Pumpkin Spice Ivermectin. Quack medicine never smelled so cozy.
This Week: Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg; Rep. Adam Kinzinger of the Jan. 6 Select Committee (R-IL); the pundit “round” table will be full of “squares” Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Face the Nation: Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo; Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA) and John Curtis (R-UT); Dr. Claire Boogaard, Medical Director of the COVID-19 Vaccine Program at Children’s National Hospital; the pundit “round” table will be full of nerds trying to “triangulate” Ha Ha Ha Ha.
CNN’s State of the Union: Secretary of State Antony Blinken; Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT); the pundit “round” table will smell like a “dirty dodecahedron” that needs a bath Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Fox GOP Talking Points Sunday: Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; the pundit “round” table will be full of “Q”uadrilateral conspiracy theories Ha Ha Ha Ha.
Happy viewing!
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Ten years ago in C&J: October 29, 2011
JEERS to government by thuggery. Over in Syria, police in Darth Vader helmets turned out by the hundreds, firing teargas and other assorted armaments at a large gathering of citizens protesting for democracy and freedom. The streets were filled with choking smoke and ear-shattering explosions against a backdrop of screams, bloodshed and chaos, which the civilized world has roundly condemned for its brutality and savagery. Oh, wait…sorry…I meant to say Oakland, California. I get ’em confused sometimes.
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And just one more…
JEERS to no-shows. Harry Houdini died 95 years ago this Sunday—yes, on Halloween—but not from one of his death-defying magic tricks. It was a ruptured appendix…but spooky nonetheless:
Houdini was 52 years old when he died, the exact number of playing cards in a deck. Further, he was born 26 years before the start of the new century, and died 26 years into the next one—as if his “life’s deck” had been deftly cut in half by Fate, the ultimate magician.
After I die, if you smell Twinkies you’ll know I’m in the vicinity.
For a full ten years after Houdini’s death, his wife Bess conducted a séance on October 31.These séances were always attended by the top names in magic, as well as personal friends of the great magician. Houdini had told Bess that if it were possible, he would send a message to her “from beyond” in secret code. Though Bess herself stopped participating in the séances after 1937,members of the magic fraternity have kept the tradition.
If you’re conducting a séance on Halloween and you smell burnt cannoli, you’ll know you’ve erroneously reached Antonin Scalia. Dog shit? Jerry Falwell.
Have a great weekend. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?
Facebook is a menace. COVID-19 is a menace. Conservatism is a cesspool. Together, those three ingredients have created a toxic stew of malevolent death and devastation. We can talk about all those things in the abstract, look at the numbers and statistics, and catch the occasional whiff of seditionist right-wing rhetoric. But I hadn’t really fully understood just how horrifying that combination of right-wing extremism, Facebook, and a killer virus was until I became a regular at the Herman Cain Awardssubreddit. This series will document some of those stories, so we are aware of what the other side is doing to our country.
Donald Trump got 74 million votes. Joe Biden got 81 million. They have to lie about everything.
OMFG this is the dumbest f’n meme! It says it rightthere on the freakin’ meme: REGISTERED.
Yes, they are registered. And when they move somewhere, they have to notify all their neighbors that they are present. And there is an online database where you can see all the sexual offenders living near you.
All of that means more than “carrying a card,” because what the heck would be the purpose of that? Even then, several states actually do put sex offender status on their drivers licenses. Registered sex offenders already have no privacy.
KEEP THAT IN MIND.
Restaurant: No mask, no shot, we don’t care, come in!
Customer: Dies, becomes severely incapacitated, or suffers financial devastation from long-haul COVID.
Restaurant: … profit?
If you think you see a parallel, you are beyond hope.
I read that as “I will not comply with a com, munist”.
Goes back to running theory—conservatives slap “communist” on anything they don’t like, utterly disregarding the actual definition of the word.
So redickuless!
Spoiler: he didn’t get COVID, because that’s not how you get COVID.
And dear god, stop being such a snowflake. It’s a nose swab.
Candace claims Central American victims of rampant drug-fueled gang violence just “want an upgrade.” El Salvador and Honduras are the two most violent countries on earth, followed by Jamaica, Venezuela, Belize, and Guatemala. But sure, they just want “an upgrade.” What a vile piece of shit. No wonder conservatives love her.
Hey look, white men saying “absolutely” to a Black woman saying that there’s no racism.
Gotta hand it to her, she found the best possible grift—absolving racist assholes of their flaws.
I didn’t remember clackers, and turns out that they were a thing before I immigrated to the United States.
Clackers […] were toys popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In 1968, tempered glass sphere models emerged that would eventually shatter, sending glass shards into the face of the user and anyone nearby.
So psyched Mr Black survived clackers. But what weird logic.
AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF SHARKS?
No! I survived Clackers!
AREN’T YOU AFRAID OF ASBESTOS?
No! I survived a Ford Pinto!
But hell, all the Clackers and lawn darts won’t take away their fear of scary brown immigrant caravans or critical race theory!
BTW, turns out the redneck in that meme is gay porn actor Kristopher Weston, which makes meme this next-level hilarious.
The one response is like “thumbs up! I’ll take that bet!”
But he survived lawn darts, so nothing to worry about.
He’s got COVID. He’s complaining about how much it sucks. He can’t even get a glass of water! Struggling to open a bag of apples, all alone, no companion to help. I want to feel sorry for him, I almost do! But then he keeps shit-posting bullshit anti-vaxx memes.
Like, what the hell is this one about? What public service is the meme talking about? Restaurants and concerts aren’t public services. Those are all private facilities. Are they talking about hospitals? Because they’re the ones that refuse to nationalize our health care system.
OMG, he reached back, reposted this same stupid meme, in order to say that no matter how much having COVID was, he still wasn’t afraid. Because of Clackers.
And really, he should’ve been, because THREE DAYS LATER:
That restaurant will no longer have his patronage. Turns out vaccinating would’ve been better for business.
He no longer has to pay those taxes.
He certainly doesn’t have to pay off his bets.
And Joe Biden no longer has to be impatient with his refusal to vaccinate.
Being afraid would’ve meant precautions like vaccination and mask. It would’ve meant taking that positive covid test result seriously and getting monoclonal antibodies. (Though he did get tested in the ER, they must’ve sent him home because of lack of beds.)
Instead, he believed all the anti-vaxxer propaganda, that it was “just the flu” (ignoring their memes that scream about the 40,000 people who die from the flu each year), and that surviving lawn darts somehow gave him extra immunity powers.
On Friday, The Undercurrent TV creator Lauren Windsor published the last of three videos showing a conversation with Republican attorney John Eastman. Eastman, who authored a plot to have Mike Pence declare Donald Trump the winner of the 2020 election by simply refusing to count electoral votes from states that Trump lost, went back to his gilded hammock in the vast network of ring-wing “institutes” following the Jan. 6 insurgency.
Once he was clear of the Trump White House, Eastman tried to downplay the whole idea that he had been seriously pushing Pence to overturn the election, throw the nation into chaos, and install Trump as dictator for life. Earlier this month, he toldNational Review that the whole thing was just a kind of thought experiment. Instead, Eastman claimed that he had only drafted up his how-to-destroy-democracy plan at the request of “somebody in the legal team. I just don’t recall.”
Eastman himself took the stage on Jan. 6 at the Stop the Steal rally, telling the roaring Trump fans that Trump’s team had caught voting machines changing votes in real-time and that thousands of spare votes had been packed away in Georgia both during the presidential results and Senate ballots “until they know how many they need” to beat Trump. Eastman also stood at Rudy Giuliani’s elbow as Trump’s attorney explained how Eastman’s plan to overturn the election was “perfectly legal.”
Despite all that, he told the reporters at National Review that the whole thing was “not viable” and that attempting to pursue the plan he presented to Trump and Pence in the Oval Office would have been “plain crazy.”
Eastman said that until Windsor hit the right’s “greatest constitutional expert” with some sold fangirl fawning. And that’s when Eastman seriously changed his tune.
EXCLUSIVE: Author of Jan 6 coup memo John Eastman told us Mike Pence didn’t take his solid legal advice & overturn the election bc Pence is “an establishment guy” (He previously told @NRO the memo was not “viable” and would have been “crazy” to pursue.) Stay tuned for Part 2. pic.twitter.com/RQeUceH1bn
Then, in part two, Windsor caught Eastman not only pressing a claim that CNN had paid Antifa to infiltrate the insurrection and capture images of violence, but she also recorded him doing what so many Republicans seem to be doing these days—flinging his arms around the Proud Boys and claiming violent white supremacists as Trump’s core supporters.
EXCLUSIVE, Jan 6 coup memo author John Eastman told us at a Claremont Institute gala that: 1. Trump planned to go to the Capitol 2. @CNN paid Antifa $60k to break in 3. FBI infiltrated and instigated the Oath Keepers + Proud Boys, whom he calls “our guys” Stay tuned for Part 3 pic.twitter.com/Ol9JTOnMYL
And in the final installment, Eastman explains how he and Trump personally leaned on 300 state legislators in an attempt to get them to sabotage democracy. But, sadly found that they all lacked the “spine” to get with the Trump now, Trump forever plan.
EXCLUSIVE: Jan 6 coup memo author John Eastman told us that the 300 state legislators he, Trump, and Giuliani tried to convince to overturn the election are “spineless” and need to be primaried in 2022. *Thanks for watching, this is the last of 4 videos in this series. pic.twitter.com/ZN5HUTM1bp
While the video is now available at The Undercurrent, all of it is likely to get some serious network air time when Eastman makes his expected appearance before the House Select Committee.
In the middle of October, reports came out detailing the arrest and obstruction of justice charges against U.S. Capitol Police officer Michael A. Riley. Officer Riley allegedly befriended a man online and shortly after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C., began advising him to delete incriminating evidence of his participation in potential crimes. That’s against the law—no matter who you are.
On Friday, POLITICO reports that Michael Riley is handing in his resignation and ending his 26-year career as a law enforcement officer. Riley has been on administrative leave since being indicted, while the Capitol Police Department conducted their own internal investigation. Riley’s defense team told POLITICO that their client pleads not guilty: “[T]he evidence will show that it is not a felony for one person to suggest to another that they take down ill-conceived Facebook posts.”
Of course, that’s not exactly what the evidence presented so far seems to show.
According to the indictment, former officer Riley reportedly befriended a man [Person 1] online, after only tangentially knowing one another through a Facebook group dedicated to fishing. Less than a week later that man attended and trespassed, and allegedly got wicked high, all while videotaping his activities, at the January 6, Stop the Steal insurrection at the State Capitol in D.C. A day after those events, Riley direct messaged the man:
“Hey [Person I], im [sic] a capitol police officer who agrees with your political stance. Take down the part about being in the building they are currently investigating and everyone who was in the buildings going to [sic] charged. Just looking out!”
“Ill-conceived?” For sure. But this isn’t you telling your buddy that their post ranting away at something is probably not something they want their grandparents or cousins to have to read in between your pictures of your new grill. Later on, Riley offered up some pro bono legal advice:
“The only thing I can see is if you went in the building and they have proof you will be charged. You could always articulate that you had nowhere to go, but thats for the court.”
While the two men continued to chat about things, including the ongoing arrests and investigations into the Jan. 6 insurrection, Riley even offered up his place for the man and his daughter to stay:
“Next time you want to come to DC just call me, you can stay at my house on the shore for free and bring your daughter to the museums. If you want to see the capitol building, lets do it legally next time…I know a guy who can get you a tour…lol. Its behind you now…lesson learned! Just ask your attorney whats next.”
Almost comically, after it became clear that the FBI was not only investigating Person 1 but that they were mostly interested in his new relationship with Officer Riley, Riley tried to delete all of his messages and then send a Dear John message to Person 1. It reads very much like an attempt at a future defense:
Hey [Person 1], another mutual friend was talking about you last night. I tried to defend you but then he showed me a video of you in the Capitol smoking weed and acting like a moron. I have to say, i was shocked and dumbfounded, since your story of getting pushed in the building with no other choice now seems not only false but is a complete lie. I feel like a moron for believing you… I was so mad last night I deleted all your post, but i wanted to text you this morning and let you know that I will no longer be conversing with you.
Of course, as the FBI chronicled, this “video” he says he was “shown” that has opened his eyes to this new friend’s flaws, is something he acknowledged seeing almost two weeks prior—long before offering his new friend tours of D.C. and free stays at his lakeside property.
