Post by mhbruin on Nov 28, 2021 11:41:50 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 454 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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Omictron May Be Much Ado About Very Little
A South African doctor who was one of the first to suspect a different coronavirus strain among patients said on Sunday that symptoms of the Omicron variant were so far mild and could be treated at home.
Dr Angelique Coetzee, a private practitioner and chair of South African Medical Association, told Reuters that on Nov 18 she noticed seven patients at her clinic who had symptoms different from the dominant Delta variant, albeit "very mild".
Now designated Omicron by the World Health Organization, the variant was detected and announced by South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Nov. 25 from samples taken from a laboratory from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16.
Coetzee said a patient on Nov. 18 reported at her clinic being "extremely fatigued" for two days with body aches and headache.
"Symptoms at that stage was very much related to normal viral infection. And because we haven't seen COVID-19 for the past eight to 10 weeks, we decided to test," she said, adding that the patient and his family turned out to be positive.
On the same day, more patients came in with similar symptoms, which was when she realised there was "something else going on." Since then, she's seen two to three patients a day.
"We have seen a lot of Delta patients during the third wave. And this doesn't fit in the clinical picture," she said, adding she alerted NICD on the same day with the clinical results.
We Still Know Very Little
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I Guess She Thinks Jail Would Provide Better Accommodations
A 31-year-old woman in Australia has been charged with arson after a fire destroyed part of a Covid-19 quarantine hotel in Cairns, Queensland.
It is alleged she lit a fire under a bed in the room she had been sharing with two children on Sunday morning.
More than 160 people were evacuated as fire took hold in the 11-storey Pacific Hotel. No-one was injured.
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The Empire Shrinks Back.
Queen Elizabeth will have one less realm after this week, when Barbados severs its final imperial links to Britain by removing the 95-year-old as its head of state and declaring itself a republic.
The former British colony -- which gained independence in 1966 -- revived its plan to become a republic last September with the country's governor general, Sandra Mason, saying, "the time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind."
Mason, a 73-year-old former jurist, will be sworn in as the first-ever president of the island nation of just under 300,000 at a ceremony late on Monday night. The Barbadian parliament elected Mason last month.
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The New Chronicles of Old Rebecca
A children's book checked out from the Boise, Idaho, public library in 1910 vanished for 111 years only to be returned anonymously, library officials said.
A copy of “New Chronicles of Rebecca” by Kate Douglas Wiggin, still in good condition, was recently returned to the Garden Valley District Library, about 51 miles outside of Boise, city library officials said.
“The checkout desk noticed that it was rather old and it didn’t have any current markings, so they looked into it,” city library assistant Anne Marie Martin told NBC affiliate KTVB of Boise.
“I don’t think anybody here has seen a book” that’s been away for so long, she said.
First published in 1907 as the follow-up to “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” the book tells the tale of girl who’s verve inspires her aunts. It was adopted as a 1938 musical that starred Shirley Temple as Rebecca.
After the Boise Public Library welcomed the book home, it was placed in its history room, where books can be browsed but not checked out.
According to the library system, the book had originally been checked out from the Carnegie Public Library, a circa-1905 building on the National Register of Historic Places that is now devoid of books.
What Would 111 Years of Fines Come Out To? It's Only About $10,000
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Build Back Better Is Better
For climate experts and policymakers, $1 trillion is just a start.
As the U.S. seeks to prove it’s serious about its international climate commitments, the focus now is on whether the Biden administration can pass its $2 trillion spending bill, which includes $555 billion to fight climate change and could be the new cornerstone of federal climate policy.
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress this month already commits historic levels of funding for climate projects. But experts say the U.S. won’t reach its climate goals or restore its international credibility unless the administration can pass its Build Back Better bill, which features a variety of other climate initiatives and calls for significant investments in clean energy.
The sizable dollar figures offer a sense of the scale of the challenge the U.S. faces in rolling back its emissions, undoing some environmental damage and preparing for more climate-related natural disasters.
“These are the biggest pieces of climate policy legislation the U.S. has seen in a decade,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher and the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “The faster we can act, the better off we’ll be, because we’re already late to the table. The time for half-measures was 30 years ago.”
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Bail Reform is Good For NON-VIOLENT Offenders
If Darrell Brooks Jr. had been behind bars, he wouldn’t have been behind the wheel allegedly driving an SUV that mowed down dozens at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., killing six people.
Three weeks before the tragedy, Brooks was arrested for driving his SUV over a woman in a Milwaukee County gas station parking lot. The woman was hospitalized, and Brooks faced numerous charges, including three related to domestic abuse. Yet despite a lengthy criminal record, including violence against women, Brooks was released on $1,000 bail just nine days later.
Last Sunday, Brooks, fleeing from what police have called “a domestic disturbance,” allegedly plowed his vehicle into parade participants and onlookers. The dead range in age from 8 to 81. More than 60 people were injured. Several children were sent to intensive care.
These are the dire consequences for a nation that refuses to take violence against women seriously.
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What Do You Get When You Cross QANON With Anti-Vaxers?
Romana Didulo is prominent QAnon figure, whose followers believe she is the true head of state in Canada, Vice News reported. She has spent months promising the execution of people involved in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including doctors, politicians, and teachers, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an NGO. She has amassed more than 70,000 followers on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where in one recent message she demanded the arrests of people vaccinating children.
In a significantly stronger message sent over the weekend, Didulo instructed her "military" to "shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject children under the age of 19 years old with Coronavirus19 vaccines / bioweapons or any other vaccines."
She named Monday 22 November as the day "hunting season" would begin against her perceived opponents, and wrote: "Please, use airports, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and other public venues to hold and detain all traitors. They will stay there until Military Tribunal is held for each one of them until the day they are executed via firing squad or hanging."
It Sounds Like the Start of a Joke, But It Is No Joke
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Who Won the Week?
Chuck Sams III, who becomes the first Native American to lead the National Park Service
The jury who found a wretched hive of American Nazis (aka Trump's "very fine people") guilty and on the hook for $25 million over their actions during their 2017 riot in Charlottesville
President Biden: 95% of fed workforce is compliant with vax/test mandate; marks transgender remembrance day; jobless claims lowest since '69; taps oil reserve to lower gas prices; sends $7.5B to rural hospitals
Dan Tangherlini and Derek Kan, nominated to the Postal Service's governing board and likely sealing the imminent doom of worst postmaster ever Louis DeJoy
The Jan. 6 committee, for issuing a boatload of new subpoenas to Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and insurrectionists who were close to Trump that day
The 2022 class of U.S. Rhodes scholars, which includes the largest number of women ever selected in one year (22 out of 32)
Justice for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, as a Georgia jury finds all 3 of the white men charged in his murder guilty, guilty, and guilty
Barack Obama, whose 2011 pledge as president to create 100,000 new STEM teachers by 2021 is exceeded by 8,000. (And bonus points for 3rd Best Spoken Word Grammy nomination)
Kamala Harris, for becoming the first woman to wield presidential power during Biden checkup, and causing MAGA crowd meltdown simply by buying cookware
Oakland computer programmer Amy Schneider, who has won $257,000 on "Jeopardy!" so far and become the first transgender contestant to make it into the Tournament of Champions
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Nice to See People Helping a Victim
More than $1.4 million had been raised as of Saturday for a man who spent 43 years behind bars before a judge overturned his conviction in a triple killing.
The Midwest Innocence Project set up the GoFundMe fundraiser as they fought for Kevin Strickland’s release, noting that he wouldn’t receive compensation from Missouri and would need help paying for basic living expenses. The state only allows wrongful imprisonment payments to people who were exonerated through DNA evidence, so the 62-year-old Strickland wouldn’t qualify.
Judge James Welsh, a retired Missouri Court of Appeals judge, ordered his release on Tuesday, finding that evidence used to convict Strickland had since been recanted or disproven. By Saturday evening, more than $1.45 million had been donated to help Strickland.
The Real Criminals Were the Police who Coerced a Confession and the Prosecutors Who Used It.
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She Is Partly Right
In yet another sign of an apparently fracturing QAnon movement, extremist attorney and QAnon conspiracy acolyte Lin Wood is now claiming that the “stop the steal” campaign alleging voter fraud in the presidential election is a concoction of the “deep state.”
“After doing the research and connecting the dots, I have reached the conclusion that the Stop the Steal organization is a Deep State organization to raise money for purposes other than to FIX 2020. … WATCH OUT for anyone affiliated with Stop the Steal. Every lie will be revealed,” Wood wrote on the right-wing social media platform Telegram on Friday, Rolling Stone reported.
Wood has been one of the biggest proponents of the baseless claim that the presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump.
Part of This Is a Scam to Steal People's Money
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I Hold Him in Contempt
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is likely to decide this week whether to charge Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff, with criminal contempt of Congress, a key panel member said.
“I think we will probably make a decision this week on our course of conduct with that particular witness and maybe others,” Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and chair of the House intelligence committee, told CNN’s State of the Union.
Schiff also said he was concerned about the Department of Justice, for a perceived lack of interest in investigating Trump’s own actions, including asking officials in Georgia to “find” votes which would overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.
I Agree With Schiff
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They Are Not Deployable. They Are Deplorable.
Troops could face a range of disciplinary measures ranging from administrative and non-judicial punishments to court martials.
The military has said that troops will be warned of potential consequences before any action is taken.
But even some of the least severe consequences - such as a formal letter of reprimand - could have an adverse impact on an individual's future assignments or chances of promotion, according to Victor Hansen, a former Army Judge Advocate General and professor at New England Law - Boston.
The problem is that letters of reprimand wouldn't address the underlying issue of unvaccinated personnel remaining in the ranks, Mr Hansen said.
"If there's an unvaccinated soldier, they're not deployable," he said. "The real question is going to be how to get them out, and the military has a lot of administrative tools to do so short of a court martial."
Some services have been clear that they will remove personnel who refuse the vaccine. In late October, for example, guidance sent to Marines warned that those who refuse the vaccine and have not received an exemption "shall be processed for administrative separation".
In November, the Army followed suit, with Army Secretary Christine Wormuth warning active-duty soldiers, reservists, and Guardsmen in a memo that they will be "flagged" and barred from re-enlistment, promotions, and most Army schools.
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He Didn't Fly Coach. He Flew Crouch.
An American Airlines flight from Guatemala to Miami Saturday was revealed to have one additional passenger on board: A man who had stowed away in the plane's landing gear.
The man, who came off of American Airlines flight 1182, which landed about 10 a.m. ET Saturday, was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
The Federal Aviation Authority told a local NBC affiliate that "as of February 2021, 129 people have attempted to stow away in the wheel wells or other areas of commercial aircraft worldwide since 1947. Of those, 100 people (about 78%) died of injuries or exposure during the flight."
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Hey Jim! What's Your Deal?
Michigan defeated Ohio State 42-27 on Saturday afternoon.
When pressed on all the trash talk that his program had endured from the Buckeyes over the years, Harbaugh kept it brief.
“Some people were born on third and think they hit a triple,” he said rather bluntly.
For obvious reasons, most are interpreting Harbaugh’s comment as a shot at Day – who clearly inherited an incredibly successful program from Urban Meyer.
Some People Need Nine Tries to Hit a Single
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"A Study in Omicron". Moderna Is On The Case.
“If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that’s going to be early 2022 before that’s really going to be available in large quantities,” he said. “The remarkable thing about the mRNA vaccines, the Moderna platform, is that we can move very fast,” he said.
Bloomberg — Moderna Inc. Chief Medical Officer Paul Burton said he suspects the new omicron coronavirus variant may elude current vaccines, and if so, a reformulated shot could be available early in the new year.“We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks,” Burton said Sunday on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company mobilized “hundreds” of staff early on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., after news of the omicron variant spread.
Protection should still exist, depending on how long ago a person was vaccinated, and for now the best advice is to take one of the current Covid-19 vaccines, Burton said.
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This Sounds Like a Lose-Lose
The US and its allies restart Iran nuclear talks on Monday unsure how Tehran's new government will approach negotiations, not optimistic about the prospects ahead and emphasizing that if diplomacy fails, the US is "prepared to use other options."
The parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will reconvene in Vienna after almost six months to discuss a mutual return to the deal by both the US and Iran, but the hiatus has given time for new obstacles to take root.
On Friday, Iran announced yet more advances in its uranium enrichment, which reduces the amount of time Tehran would need to develop a nuclear weapon, if it chooses to, an announcement clearly meant to give Iran leverage when it arrives in Vienna for talks.
Other parties to the agreement -- including Germany, the UK, Britain, France, China and Russia -- are coming into the talks calling for negotiations to pick up where they left off. European sources tell CNN they expect the Iranians to treat the meeting as "round one." US officials have expressed similar concerns.
The recently elected hardline government in Tehran will send a new set of negotiators to Vienna who have been emphasizing the need for complete US sanctions relief, not compliance with the deal, while US officials have said they have absolutely no plans to offer Iran incentives to talk.
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Doses Administered 7-Day Average | Number of People Receiving 1 or More Doses | Number of People Fully Vaccinated | New Cases 7-Day Average | Deaths 7-Day Average | |
| Nov 28 | No Data | ||||
| Nov 27 | No Data | ||||
| Nov 26 | No Data | 73,962 | 742 | ||
| Nov 25 | No Data | 82,440 | 887 | ||
| Nov 24 | 898,833 | 231,367,686 | 196,168,756 | 93,931 | 989 |
| Nov 23 | 1,126,545 | 230,669,289 | 195,973,992 | 94,266 | 982 |
| Nov 22 | 1,521,815 | 230,732,565 | 196,398,948 | 93,668 | 1,009 |
| Nov 21 | 1,774,196 | 230,298,744 | 196,284,442 | 91,021 | 985 |
| Nov 20 | 2,136,513 | 229,837,421 | 196,128,496 | 90,823 | 996 |
| Nov 19 | 1,952,717 | 229,291,004 | 195,920,566 | 92,852 | 1,047 |
| Nov 18 | 1,870,564 | 228,570,531 | 195,713,107 | 94,260 | 1,069 |
| Nov 17 | 1,811,047 | 228,175,638 | 195,612,365 | 88,482 | 1,032 |
| Nov 16 | 1,608,906 | 227,691,941 | 195,435,688 | 85,944 | 1,028 |
| Nov 15 | 1,582,519 | 227,133,617 | 195,275,904 | 83,671 | 1,029 |
| Nov 14 | 1,375,998 | 226,607,653 | 195,120,470 | 80,823 | 1,043 |
| Nov 13 | 1,370,279 | 226,157,226 | 194,951,106 | 80,590 | 1,049 |
| Nov 12 | 1,335,066 | 225,606,197 | 194,747,839 | 78,552 | 1,038 |
| Nov 11 | No Data | 73,218 | 999 | ||
| Nov 10 | 1,316,294 | 224,660,453 | 194,382,921 | 76,458 | 1,051 |
| Nov 9 | 1,316,228 | 224,257,467 | 194,168,611 | 74,584 | 1,078 |
| Nov 8 | 1,300,925 | 223,944,369 | 194,001,108 | 73,312 | 1,078 |
| Nov 7 | 1,265,361 | 223,629,671 | 193,832,584 | 71,867 | 1,068 |
| Nov 6 | 1,254,975 | 223,245,121 | 193,627,929 | 71,327 | 1,079 |
| Nov 5 | 1,283,684 | 222,902,939 | 193,425,862 | 71,517 | 1,071 |
| Nov 4 | 1,188,564 | 222,591,394 | 193,227,813 | 71,241 | 1,102 |
| Nov 3 | 1,068,184 | 222,268,786 | 192,931,486 | 70,431 | 1,109 |
| Nov 2 | 1,112,624 | 221,961,370 | 192,726,406 | 71,029 | 1,130 |
| Nov 1 | 1,243,313 | 221,760,691 | 192,586,927 | 74,798 | 1,190 |
| Oct 31 | 1,203,517 | 221,520,153 | 192,453,500 | 71,207 | 1,151 |
| Oct 30 | 1,114,502 | 221,221,467 | 192,244,927 | 71,690 | 1,156 |
| Oct 29 | 1,008,247 | 220,860,887* | 191,997,869 | 69,197 | 1,104 |
| Oct 28 | 1,086,543 | 221,348,530 | 191,242,432 | 68,177 | 1,086 |
| Oct 27 | 959,348 | 220,936,118 | 190,990,750 | 68,792 | 1,129 |
| Oct 26 | 796,148 | 220,648,845 | 190,793,100 | 68,151 | 1,098 |
| Oct 25 | 786,321 | 220,519,217 | 190,699,790 | 65,953 | 1,159 |
| Oct 24 | 768,503 | 220,351,217 | 190,578,704 | 59,129 | 1,122 |
| Feb 16 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | |
| % of Total Population | 69.7% | 59.1% |
| % of Population 12+ | 80.3% | 69.1% |
| % of Population 18+ | 82.2% | 71.0% |
| % of Population 65+ | 99.9% | 86.1% |
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Omictron May Be Much Ado About Very Little
A South African doctor who was one of the first to suspect a different coronavirus strain among patients said on Sunday that symptoms of the Omicron variant were so far mild and could be treated at home.
Dr Angelique Coetzee, a private practitioner and chair of South African Medical Association, told Reuters that on Nov 18 she noticed seven patients at her clinic who had symptoms different from the dominant Delta variant, albeit "very mild".
Now designated Omicron by the World Health Organization, the variant was detected and announced by South Africa's National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) on Nov. 25 from samples taken from a laboratory from Nov. 14 to Nov. 16.
Coetzee said a patient on Nov. 18 reported at her clinic being "extremely fatigued" for two days with body aches and headache.
"Symptoms at that stage was very much related to normal viral infection. And because we haven't seen COVID-19 for the past eight to 10 weeks, we decided to test," she said, adding that the patient and his family turned out to be positive.
On the same day, more patients came in with similar symptoms, which was when she realised there was "something else going on." Since then, she's seen two to three patients a day.
"We have seen a lot of Delta patients during the third wave. And this doesn't fit in the clinical picture," she said, adding she alerted NICD on the same day with the clinical results.
We Still Know Very Little
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I Guess She Thinks Jail Would Provide Better Accommodations
A 31-year-old woman in Australia has been charged with arson after a fire destroyed part of a Covid-19 quarantine hotel in Cairns, Queensland.
It is alleged she lit a fire under a bed in the room she had been sharing with two children on Sunday morning.
More than 160 people were evacuated as fire took hold in the 11-storey Pacific Hotel. No-one was injured.
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The Empire Shrinks Back.
Queen Elizabeth will have one less realm after this week, when Barbados severs its final imperial links to Britain by removing the 95-year-old as its head of state and declaring itself a republic.
The former British colony -- which gained independence in 1966 -- revived its plan to become a republic last September with the country's governor general, Sandra Mason, saying, "the time has come to fully leave our colonial past behind."
Mason, a 73-year-old former jurist, will be sworn in as the first-ever president of the island nation of just under 300,000 at a ceremony late on Monday night. The Barbadian parliament elected Mason last month.
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The New Chronicles of Old Rebecca
A children's book checked out from the Boise, Idaho, public library in 1910 vanished for 111 years only to be returned anonymously, library officials said.
A copy of “New Chronicles of Rebecca” by Kate Douglas Wiggin, still in good condition, was recently returned to the Garden Valley District Library, about 51 miles outside of Boise, city library officials said.
“The checkout desk noticed that it was rather old and it didn’t have any current markings, so they looked into it,” city library assistant Anne Marie Martin told NBC affiliate KTVB of Boise.
“I don’t think anybody here has seen a book” that’s been away for so long, she said.
First published in 1907 as the follow-up to “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm,” the book tells the tale of girl who’s verve inspires her aunts. It was adopted as a 1938 musical that starred Shirley Temple as Rebecca.
After the Boise Public Library welcomed the book home, it was placed in its history room, where books can be browsed but not checked out.
According to the library system, the book had originally been checked out from the Carnegie Public Library, a circa-1905 building on the National Register of Historic Places that is now devoid of books.
What Would 111 Years of Fines Come Out To? It's Only About $10,000
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Build Back Better Is Better
For climate experts and policymakers, $1 trillion is just a start.
As the U.S. seeks to prove it’s serious about its international climate commitments, the focus now is on whether the Biden administration can pass its $2 trillion spending bill, which includes $555 billion to fight climate change and could be the new cornerstone of federal climate policy.
The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill passed by Congress this month already commits historic levels of funding for climate projects. But experts say the U.S. won’t reach its climate goals or restore its international credibility unless the administration can pass its Build Back Better bill, which features a variety of other climate initiatives and calls for significant investments in clean energy.
The sizable dollar figures offer a sense of the scale of the challenge the U.S. faces in rolling back its emissions, undoing some environmental damage and preparing for more climate-related natural disasters.
“These are the biggest pieces of climate policy legislation the U.S. has seen in a decade,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a climate researcher and the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy. “The faster we can act, the better off we’ll be, because we’re already late to the table. The time for half-measures was 30 years ago.”
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Bail Reform is Good For NON-VIOLENT Offenders
If Darrell Brooks Jr. had been behind bars, he wouldn’t have been behind the wheel allegedly driving an SUV that mowed down dozens at a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis., killing six people.
Three weeks before the tragedy, Brooks was arrested for driving his SUV over a woman in a Milwaukee County gas station parking lot. The woman was hospitalized, and Brooks faced numerous charges, including three related to domestic abuse. Yet despite a lengthy criminal record, including violence against women, Brooks was released on $1,000 bail just nine days later.
Last Sunday, Brooks, fleeing from what police have called “a domestic disturbance,” allegedly plowed his vehicle into parade participants and onlookers. The dead range in age from 8 to 81. More than 60 people were injured. Several children were sent to intensive care.
These are the dire consequences for a nation that refuses to take violence against women seriously.
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What Do You Get When You Cross QANON With Anti-Vaxers?
Romana Didulo is prominent QAnon figure, whose followers believe she is the true head of state in Canada, Vice News reported. She has spent months promising the execution of people involved in the response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including doctors, politicians, and teachers, according to the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, an NGO. She has amassed more than 70,000 followers on the encrypted messaging app Telegram, where in one recent message she demanded the arrests of people vaccinating children.
In a significantly stronger message sent over the weekend, Didulo instructed her "military" to "shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject children under the age of 19 years old with Coronavirus19 vaccines / bioweapons or any other vaccines."
She named Monday 22 November as the day "hunting season" would begin against her perceived opponents, and wrote: "Please, use airports, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and other public venues to hold and detain all traitors. They will stay there until Military Tribunal is held for each one of them until the day they are executed via firing squad or hanging."
It Sounds Like the Start of a Joke, But It Is No Joke
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Who Won the Week?
Chuck Sams III, who becomes the first Native American to lead the National Park Service
The jury who found a wretched hive of American Nazis (aka Trump's "very fine people") guilty and on the hook for $25 million over their actions during their 2017 riot in Charlottesville
President Biden: 95% of fed workforce is compliant with vax/test mandate; marks transgender remembrance day; jobless claims lowest since '69; taps oil reserve to lower gas prices; sends $7.5B to rural hospitals
Dan Tangherlini and Derek Kan, nominated to the Postal Service's governing board and likely sealing the imminent doom of worst postmaster ever Louis DeJoy
The Jan. 6 committee, for issuing a boatload of new subpoenas to Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and insurrectionists who were close to Trump that day
The 2022 class of U.S. Rhodes scholars, which includes the largest number of women ever selected in one year (22 out of 32)
Justice for the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, as a Georgia jury finds all 3 of the white men charged in his murder guilty, guilty, and guilty
Barack Obama, whose 2011 pledge as president to create 100,000 new STEM teachers by 2021 is exceeded by 8,000. (And bonus points for 3rd Best Spoken Word Grammy nomination)
Kamala Harris, for becoming the first woman to wield presidential power during Biden checkup, and causing MAGA crowd meltdown simply by buying cookware
Oakland computer programmer Amy Schneider, who has won $257,000 on "Jeopardy!" so far and become the first transgender contestant to make it into the Tournament of Champions
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Nice to See People Helping a Victim
More than $1.4 million had been raised as of Saturday for a man who spent 43 years behind bars before a judge overturned his conviction in a triple killing.
The Midwest Innocence Project set up the GoFundMe fundraiser as they fought for Kevin Strickland’s release, noting that he wouldn’t receive compensation from Missouri and would need help paying for basic living expenses. The state only allows wrongful imprisonment payments to people who were exonerated through DNA evidence, so the 62-year-old Strickland wouldn’t qualify.
Judge James Welsh, a retired Missouri Court of Appeals judge, ordered his release on Tuesday, finding that evidence used to convict Strickland had since been recanted or disproven. By Saturday evening, more than $1.45 million had been donated to help Strickland.
The Real Criminals Were the Police who Coerced a Confession and the Prosecutors Who Used It.
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She Is Partly Right
In yet another sign of an apparently fracturing QAnon movement, extremist attorney and QAnon conspiracy acolyte Lin Wood is now claiming that the “stop the steal” campaign alleging voter fraud in the presidential election is a concoction of the “deep state.”
“After doing the research and connecting the dots, I have reached the conclusion that the Stop the Steal organization is a Deep State organization to raise money for purposes other than to FIX 2020. … WATCH OUT for anyone affiliated with Stop the Steal. Every lie will be revealed,” Wood wrote on the right-wing social media platform Telegram on Friday, Rolling Stone reported.
Wood has been one of the biggest proponents of the baseless claim that the presidential election was rigged against Donald Trump.
Part of This Is a Scam to Steal People's Money
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I Hold Him in Contempt
The House select committee investigating the Capitol attack is likely to decide this week whether to charge Mark Meadows, Donald Trump’s final White House chief of staff, with criminal contempt of Congress, a key panel member said.
“I think we will probably make a decision this week on our course of conduct with that particular witness and maybe others,” Adam Schiff, a California Democrat and chair of the House intelligence committee, told CNN’s State of the Union.
Schiff also said he was concerned about the Department of Justice, for a perceived lack of interest in investigating Trump’s own actions, including asking officials in Georgia to “find” votes which would overturn his defeat by Joe Biden.
I Agree With Schiff
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They Are Not Deployable. They Are Deplorable.
Troops could face a range of disciplinary measures ranging from administrative and non-judicial punishments to court martials.
The military has said that troops will be warned of potential consequences before any action is taken.
But even some of the least severe consequences - such as a formal letter of reprimand - could have an adverse impact on an individual's future assignments or chances of promotion, according to Victor Hansen, a former Army Judge Advocate General and professor at New England Law - Boston.
The problem is that letters of reprimand wouldn't address the underlying issue of unvaccinated personnel remaining in the ranks, Mr Hansen said.
"If there's an unvaccinated soldier, they're not deployable," he said. "The real question is going to be how to get them out, and the military has a lot of administrative tools to do so short of a court martial."
Some services have been clear that they will remove personnel who refuse the vaccine. In late October, for example, guidance sent to Marines warned that those who refuse the vaccine and have not received an exemption "shall be processed for administrative separation".
In November, the Army followed suit, with Army Secretary Christine Wormuth warning active-duty soldiers, reservists, and Guardsmen in a memo that they will be "flagged" and barred from re-enlistment, promotions, and most Army schools.
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He Didn't Fly Coach. He Flew Crouch.
An American Airlines flight from Guatemala to Miami Saturday was revealed to have one additional passenger on board: A man who had stowed away in the plane's landing gear.
The man, who came off of American Airlines flight 1182, which landed about 10 a.m. ET Saturday, was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital.
The Federal Aviation Authority told a local NBC affiliate that "as of February 2021, 129 people have attempted to stow away in the wheel wells or other areas of commercial aircraft worldwide since 1947. Of those, 100 people (about 78%) died of injuries or exposure during the flight."
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Hey Jim! What's Your Deal?
Michigan defeated Ohio State 42-27 on Saturday afternoon.
When pressed on all the trash talk that his program had endured from the Buckeyes over the years, Harbaugh kept it brief.
“Some people were born on third and think they hit a triple,” he said rather bluntly.
For obvious reasons, most are interpreting Harbaugh’s comment as a shot at Day – who clearly inherited an incredibly successful program from Urban Meyer.
Some People Need Nine Tries to Hit a Single
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"A Study in Omicron". Moderna Is On The Case.
“If we have to make a brand new vaccine, I think that’s going to be early 2022 before that’s really going to be available in large quantities,” he said. “The remarkable thing about the mRNA vaccines, the Moderna platform, is that we can move very fast,” he said.
Bloomberg — Moderna Inc. Chief Medical Officer Paul Burton said he suspects the new omicron coronavirus variant may elude current vaccines, and if so, a reformulated shot could be available early in the new year.“We should know about the ability of the current vaccine to provide protection in the next couple of weeks,” Burton said Sunday on the BBC’s “Andrew Marr Show.”
The Cambridge, Massachusetts-based biotech company mobilized “hundreds” of staff early on Thursday, Thanksgiving Day in the U.S., after news of the omicron variant spread.
Protection should still exist, depending on how long ago a person was vaccinated, and for now the best advice is to take one of the current Covid-19 vaccines, Burton said.
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This Sounds Like a Lose-Lose
The US and its allies restart Iran nuclear talks on Monday unsure how Tehran's new government will approach negotiations, not optimistic about the prospects ahead and emphasizing that if diplomacy fails, the US is "prepared to use other options."
The parties to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action will reconvene in Vienna after almost six months to discuss a mutual return to the deal by both the US and Iran, but the hiatus has given time for new obstacles to take root.
On Friday, Iran announced yet more advances in its uranium enrichment, which reduces the amount of time Tehran would need to develop a nuclear weapon, if it chooses to, an announcement clearly meant to give Iran leverage when it arrives in Vienna for talks.
Other parties to the agreement -- including Germany, the UK, Britain, France, China and Russia -- are coming into the talks calling for negotiations to pick up where they left off. European sources tell CNN they expect the Iranians to treat the meeting as "round one." US officials have expressed similar concerns.
The recently elected hardline government in Tehran will send a new set of negotiators to Vienna who have been emphasizing the need for complete US sanctions relief, not compliance with the deal, while US officials have said they have absolutely no plans to offer Iran incentives to talk.
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