Weds. Do You Miss the Flat Pigtoe? Wrong Species Extinct?

US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 392 Million Shots  (Population 333 Million)


2/3rds of Adults Fully Vaccinated.


CALIFORNIA - California Breaks the 50 Million Dose Barrier

More than 1 dose for every person in California (39.6 million).

--------------
The Trucks Must Roll in the UK

The government's reserve tanker fleet will be "on the road" on Wednesday afternoon to boost fuel deliveries, the business secretary has said.

Civilians will drive the trucks from their depots in Cambridgeshire and West Yorkshire, Kwasi Kwarteng said.

He has also said soldiers would be delivering fuel in the coming days.

Ministers have decided to deploy troops to drive tankers in "the next couple of days", he said, in addition to the civilians driving them from Wednesday.

Some 150 military drivers are ready to drive the fuel tankers, with another 150 Army personnel ready to support them.
--------------
The World Biggest Shark

China hands out at least twice as much development money as the US and other major powers, new evidence shows, with most of it coming in the form of risky high-interest loans from Chinese state banks.

The sheer amount of Chinese lending is startling. Not too long ago China received foreign aid, but now the tables have turned.

Over an 18-year period, China has granted or loaned money to 13,427 infrastructure projects worth $843bn across 165 countries, according to the AidData research lab at William & Mary, a university in the US state of Virginia.

Much of this money is linked to Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road strategy. Starting in 2013, it leverages China's expertise in infrastructure projects, and ample foreign currency, to build new global trading routes.
However, critics fear that the high-interest loans funding many Chinese projects are saddling unsuspecting populations in sky-high debt.

Loan Shark
--------------
The Skies Are About to Get a Little Friendlier

Nearly 600 United Airlines employees face being fired after failing to comply with the firm's Covid-19 vaccination policy.

The vast majority of its 67,000 US staff have supplied proof of vaccination, which was required by Monday.




--------------
Get the Other Shot Now!

"People who are older, with compromised immune systems, may have waning immunity, and so sometimes are (advised not) to get their flu vaccines too early," said CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Leana Wen, an emergency physician and visiting professor of health policy and management at the George Washington University Milken Institute School of Public Health.

"However, 'too early' generally refers to August. October -- essentially now -- is entirely fine for these individuals to get vaccinated."

Even if flu activity is low in your community right now, you shouldn't wait for a surge in cases to be the reason you get a flu shot. Flu activity could increase at any time, according to the CDC. "Remember, after you are vaccinated, your body takes about two weeks to develop any antibodies that protect against flu," the CDC noted.
--------------
Free Room and Board AND a Pension?

Tens of millions of dollars are flowing into the bank accounts of retired police officers convicted of breaking the very laws they were sworn to uphold.

They have been found guilty of sexual and violent crimes, including murder and rape, or other serious job-related offenses, such as bribery and embezzlement. Some have admitted to molesting young children. Others have used their badges to enrich themselves or wield power over vulnerable members of their communities. Many are still sitting in prison cells. Yet the checks keep coming and will for the rest of their lives — all as taxpayers help foot the bill.

The promise of these unlimited monthly retirement checks is one of the biggest perks of going into the physically demanding and dangerous field of law enforcement. It is only in rare cases that governments strip disgraced officers of these benefits, using a harsh penalty known as pension forfeiture.

Now, in the face of growing calls for police reform, some lawmakers, academics and police reform advocates say forfeiture of these coveted police retirement packages could be used as a tool to discourage the worst behavior. Recent research backs this up, suggesting that states with strict pension forfeiture laws have experienced lower levels of police misconduct.
--------------
The Circular Firing Squad Is Getting Automatic Weapons

House progressives are digging in on threats to block passage of the infrastructure bill, despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi's call to pass it quickly this week and tackle the social safety net package next.

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., the chair of the progressive caucus, which boasts 95 House members, told NBC News that "nothing has changed" and that more than half her caucus is prepared to vote down the infrastructure bill if it comes up before the larger tax-and-spending bill has passed the Senate.




Manchin Won't Move.  The Progressives Won't Move.  Stupid Must be Contagious
--------------
The House May Be Cheap, But the AC Bill Will Kill the Budget

Families priced out of the white-hot housing market are finding that their hard-earned dollars go further in places like Central Texas, where the blazing heat means home prices are markedly cooler.

“I’m willing to exchange one extreme for the next to have a change in scenery and the opportunity to have more space,” said Elsie Ayala, a Californian raised in Chicago, who just purchased a 1,700-square-foot home in Pflugerville, a suburb of Austin, Texas, for slightly more than her $400,000 budget.
--------------
Cotton Gets Burned




--------------
Just Step Over the Bodies on Your Way to the Bank




--------------
We'll All Miss the Flat Pigtoe, Won't We?

Death’s come knocking a last time for the splendid ivory-billed woodpecker and 22 more birds, fish and other species: The U.S. government is declaring them extinct.

It’s a rare move for wildlife officials to give up hope on a plant or animal, but government scientists say they’ve exhausted efforts to find these 23. And they warn climate change, on top of other pressures, could make such disappearances more common as a warming planet adds to the dangers facing imperiled plants and wildlife.

The ivory-billed woodpecker was perhaps the best known species the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Wednesday will announce is extinct. It went out stubbornly and with fanfare, making unconfirmed appearances in recent decades that ignited a frenzy of ultimately fruitless searches in the swamps of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Others such as the flat pigtoe, a freshwater mussel in the southeastern U.S., were identified in the wild only a few times and never seen again, meaning by the time they got a name they were fading from existence.



It's Time for the QOP To Become Extinct
--------------
Sorry YouTube.  The Horse Left the Barn Months Ago

YouTube announced a total ban Wednesday on vaccine misinformation and the termination of the accounts of several prominent anti-vaccine influencers, including Joseph Mercola and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., citing “the need to remove egregious harmful content.”

The new policy was crafted as the company began to see false claims about Covid-19 vaccines “spill over into misinformation about vaccines in general,” according to a company blog post.

“We’re now at a point where it’s more important than ever to expand the work we started with COVID-19 to other vaccines,” the company wrote.

YouTube already had a policy against Covid vaccine misinformation, but the new ban against broader vaccine misinformation includes content that falsely claims approved vaccines are dangerous or ineffective, including the false belief that vaccines cause autism or cancer.
--------------
Second Verse.  Same as the First!

The side effects Americans experienced from a third dose of a coronavirus vaccine are similar to those from a second dose, according to a study on Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The research provides an insight into the safety of additional vaccine shots as the United States rolls out a booster regimen program for older adults and workers in high-risk jobs.

Data from nearly 12,600 people who received a third dose of a coronavirus vaccine by Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna showed that side effects — which were described as mostly being mild to moderate, and occurring the day after vaccination — were prevalent at similar rates to those from a second vaccine dose during the regular course.
--------------
Raise Your Hand If You Are Surprised.  I'd Better Not See Any Hands.

Donald Trump is preparing to sue to block the release of White House records from his administration to the House select committee scrutinizing the 6 January attack on the Capitol by claiming executive privilege.

Trump’s moves to try to resist the select committee, informed by a source familiar with his planning, are likely to lead to constitutional clashes in court that would test the power of Congress’s oversight authority over the executive branch.

The former president said in recent days that he would cite executive privilege to thwart House select committee investigators seeking to compel his top aides to testify about 6 January and what he knew of plans to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s election win.

But the sharpening contours of Trump’s intention to stonewall the select committee mark a new turning point as he seeks to keep a grip on the rapidly escalating investigation into the events of 6 January that left five dead and about 140 others injured.

The former president also expects top aides – Mark Meadows, Dan Scavino, Steve Bannon and Kash Patel – to defy select committee subpoenas for records and testimony.

Trump is not guaranteed to win in cases over executive privilege given he is no longer president, but the plan could delay – and therefore hamper – House select committee investigators.

In Other Previous Guy Lawsuit News ...

A New York arbitrator said former President Donald Trump's non-disclosure agreement against his ex-White House aide Omarosa Manigault Newman is "unenforceable" in a ruling handed down on Monday.

Arbitrator T. Andrew Brown said in the ruling that the terms of Trump’s non-disclosure agreement were "highly problematic" because it did not adhere to typical legal standards, describing it as “vague, indefinite, and therefore void and unenforceable."

“The Agreement effectively imposes on [Manigault Newman] an obligation to never say anything remotely critical of Mr. Trump, his family or his or his family members’ businesses for the rest of her life," Brown said in the ruling.
--------------
This Story is Just Batty

The Illinois Department of Public Health on Tuesday reported the first human case of rabies in the state since 1954 in a man who died after apparently being bitten by a bat.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the diagnosis after testing at its lab, the department said.

In mid-August, a Lake County man in his 80s woke up to find a bat on his neck, the department said. The bat was captured and went on to test positive for rabies.

This month, the man started experiencing symptoms associated with rabies – including neck pain, a headache, numbness, difficult controlling his arms, finger numbness, and difficulty speaking. The man has since died.
--------------
I Am Sure Mitch Will Oppose This

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a bill to permanently end the sentencing disparities between crack cocaine and powder, a policy that has led to the disproportionate incarceration of African Americans.

In a bipartisan vote of 361-66, the House approved the EQUAL Act, short for Eliminating a Quantifiably Unjust Application of the Law.

The bill will now head to the Senate, where criminal justice advocates believe it has a chance of passing. The Justice Department also previously endorsed the bill.

The disparities between crack and powder cocaine date back to war-on-drugs policies in the 1980s.

After All, Putting Black People in Prison Means They Can't Vote
--------------
Democrats Are Trying to Shame Mitch, a Man Who Never Feels Shame

It's a game of chicken with the global economy.

The United States is heading for a cliff over the need for Congress to lift the ceiling on how much the US government can borrow. If things go wrong, the reverberations will be felt far beyond US shores.

Since the US government spends more than it takes in through revenues, a debt default would force it to stop paying out — so military salaries, government retirement payments and other benefits would dry up. And if the US can't pay interest on its debts, the rates it pays to borrow money will probably rise — meaning that mortgages, car loans and credit card bills would also go up. Millions of Americans would probably lose their jobs and the slowing pandemic recovery would crash. Since the stability of US debt is the bedrock of the global economy, a default by Washington could plunge the rest of the world into crisis.
--------------
It's Just Practice.  And Games.  So What If He Misses Half the Games?

Nets general manager Sean Marks said last week that the city requirements would not be a hindrance to the team. If Kyrie Irving is unvaccinated and doesn't get an exemption, however, he will not be able to practice with the Nets in Brooklyn or play in home games.

Irving's aunt, Tyki, recently told Rolling Stone that his stance is "not religious-based, it's moral-based." Tyki also referred to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Chief Medical Advisor to the President, as "Dr. False-y." Rolling Stone reported that Irving has recently liked Instagram posts from an anti-vaccination conspiracy theorist.
..................
Chris Mannix: I was asking around a couple of teams, just for their opinion on the trade value of Kyrie Irving: it’s virtually zero. I mean, he makes $35 million this year, and he’s as unpredictable as you get.

Source: Spotify
--------------