Post by mhbruin on Dec 14, 2021 10:01:46 GMT -8
US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 487 Million Shots (Population 333 Million)
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Next Time Ban the Virus From Entering Your Country, Not Airplanes. It Will Be Just As Effective But Hurt Fewer People.
The government has said that all 11 countries will be removed from the UK's travel red list from 4am on Wednesday.
Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are on the list.
The red list was reintroduced in late November as a precaution after the emergence of the Omicron variant.
But Health Secretary Sajid Javid said it had spread so widely the rules no longer had much purpose.
Or Try This
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So There's Hope For Lauren Boebert?
Considering a career in brain surgery or rocket science? It might well be within reach.
Members of both professions aren't necessarily more clever than the general public, according to a study.
Researchers asked 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons to complete a series of tasks to test their cognition.
The results, published in the British Medical Journal, show few differences with members of the British public.
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Yikes!
Hundreds of millions of devices around the world could be exposed to a newly revealed software vulnerability, as a senior Biden administration cyber official warned executives from major US industries Monday that they need to take action to address "one of the most serious" flaws she has seen in her career.
Chinese-government linked hackers have already begun using the vulnerability, according to Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technology officer for cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Mandiant declined to elaborate on what organizations the hackers were targeting.
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I Can't Even Imagine What Would Be in their Christmas Stockings
There's usually a sense of excitement about what lies beneath the Christmas tree, but for one festive family the biggest surprise was lurking in the branches up above.
Rob and Marcela Wild wasted no time in calling in a professional after they discovered one of Africa's most venomous snakes hiding between the tinsel and baubles at their home in South Africa on Friday.
Having decorated the tree just hours earlier, they spotted their cats staring at its branches.
Rob Wild, a British stock market trader who moved with his Costa Rican wife to South Africa 18 years ago, told CNN on Tuesday: "The cats were peering into the tree and my wife said 'there's probably a mouse in there somewhere.'"
They soon discovered a rather different animal staring back, however -- a boomslang.
"I didn't know what it was at the time but then I Googled what snakes are in our area and it came up immediately as a boomslang. I thought 'holy Moses, this is the king of all poisonous snakes,'" the 55-year-old said.
The boomslang is known as a shy species, but it is one of the most venomous in Africa. The animal's venom causes hemorrhages and can be fatal to humans in small amounts.
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Which Do You Want First, the Good News Or the Bad News?
The first major real-world study of the omicron Covid-19 variant found that it appeared to cause less severe illness in South Africa, where it was first discovered last month, but that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offer reduced protection against it.
The analysis, released Tuesday by the country's largest health care administrator, found that on average 29 percent fewer people were being admitted to hospital in the region than previously with the delta variant. However, the study also found that two Pfizer jabs gave 70 percent protection against hospitalization from the new variant, compared with 90 percent seen in the delta wave.
Experts say it's too early to say whether these findings are good or bad news for the rest of the world.
So We Are More Likely to Get Sick, But Not AS Sick
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Mitch Finds Out That If You Lay Down With Boomslangs, You Are Likely to Get Bitten
Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka, who is challenging Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski for her Alaska seat, is the latest GOP Senate hopeful to say she'll vote to send McConnell packing if she is elected, according to Politico.
"When I defeat Murkowski and become Alaska’s next U.S. Senator, I will not support Mitch McConnell as leader," Tshibaka told Steve Bannon in a Monday appearance on his War Room podcast. "It’s time for new, America First leadership in the Senate.”
Tshibaka's pronouncement sounds a similar note to that of Missouri Senate candidate and disgraced former governor Eric Greitens, who also appeared on Bannon's podcast to serve notice to McConnell.
"We've got to have new leadership in the Senate. The Republican Party is now the MAGA Party," Greitens said. "No more weak, woke, establishment Republicans!" Greitens added when he tweeted out the clip.
Another Trump toady, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who is running for the state’s open seat, has hinted at something similar.
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Damn the Tornadoes! Full Speed Ahead!
As a catastrophic tornado approached this city Friday, employees of a candle factory — which would later be destroyed — heard the warning sirens and wanted to leave the building. But at least five workers said supervisors warned employees that they would be fired if they left their shifts early. For hours, as word of the coming storm spread, as many as 15 workers beseeched managers to let them take shelter at their own homes, only to have their requests rebuffed, the workers said. Fearing for their safety, some left during their shifts regardless of the repercussions.
McKayla Emery, 21, said in an interview from her hospital bed that workers first asked to leave shortly after tornado sirens sounded outside the factory around 5:30 p.m.
“People had questioned if they could leave or go home,” said Emery, who preferred to stay at work and make extra money. Overtime pay was available, but it wasn’t clear whether those who stayed were offered additional pay. Supervisors and team leaders told employees that leaving would probably jeopardize their jobs, the employees said. “If you leave, you’re more than likely to be fired,” Emery said she overheard managers tell four workers standing near her who wanted to leave. “I heard that with my own ears.”
Those Candles Won't Make Themselves!
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You've Got to Fight For Your Right To Pizza!
A Tennessee man was arrested for threatening staff at a Little Caesars Pizza with an AK-47 - the favorite gun of Second Amendment Patriots™ everywhere! - after being told his pepperoni pizza would take 10 minutes to make.
The suspect, Charles Doty Jr got upset and demanded a free breadstick order and went outside the business to wait for the pizza. When Doty Jr. returned, he had the rifle in hand and was pointing it at employees, demanding his pizza immediately.
This life threatening incident occurred over a $6 pizza.
The suspect was later arrested and taken to jail.
To no one's surprise, this incident occurred just a few months after the Republican-controlled legislature in Tennessee enacted a “permitless carry” law, allowing any random yahoo to carry weapons without any training or licensing from the state.
..........
Two men walked into a Papa John's pizza shop in Utah to pick up the order they'd earlier placed over the phone. Upon being told a computer shutdown had delayed their order, both men became upset and refused to leave until employees called police.
The two customers ran off, sans pizza, into the night, but returned a short while later and fired a gun at the pizza store, shattering glass and injuring one employee.
Thankfully, police quickly found both men, determined the identity of the shooter, and placed him under arrest.
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They Know Who You Are And Where You Live
The identities of Republican lawmakers and aides linked to the Capitol riot by documents provided by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows will soon be revealed by House investigators, a key congressman said Monday.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, told reporters that the documents were “quite revealing.”
He refused to immediately name the Republican legislators revealed in the “information that we received from Mr. Meadows” but said they would be identified in the future.
“Information we have received has been quite revealing about members of Congress involved in the activities of Jan. 6 as well as staff,” he said. Thompson spoke outside the House chambers after the committee voted in favor of a resolution recommending criminal charges against Meadows for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
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If An Idiot Shouts "You're Fired" in a Forest and No One Is There to Hear It, Does He Make a Sound?
Mary Trump attributes her cousin Donald Trump Jr.’s texts during the U.S. Capitol riot to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to one thing: “cowardice.”
Trump Jr. was among multiple conservative figures who pleaded with Meadows to get then-President Donald Trump to call off the violence from his supporters, according to text messages released Monday by the House select committee investigating the insurrection.
“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,” Trump Jr. wrote to Meadows.
“I’m pushing it hard,” Meadows replied. “I agree.”
“We need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now,” Trump Jr. continued. “It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell asked Mary Trump why Trump Jr. texted Meadows and not his own father.
“I wish that the answer you had given was the right one ― caller ID,” she cracked in response. “But in this particular instance, it’s simply cowardice, because Donny knew that the message he was delivering was the message his father did not want to hear.”
Mary Trump predicted her uncle will lash out at the release of the messages. But his inner circle has “become so small” there may not be anyone left for him to fire, she noted.
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To Serve and Protect --- The Criminals
An email authored by Donald Trump’s chief of staff in the run-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol may help explain military leaders’ reluctance to deploy troops that day: Doing so could have forced troops to choose between following the orders of their direct commanders or obeying the commander in chief of the United States armed forces.
Mark Meadows wrote that the National Guard would be deployed to “‘protect pro Trump people’ and that many more would be available on standby,” according to the resolution by the House committee investigating Jan. 6 that recommends referring criminal contempt of Congress charges against Meadows to the Department of Justice.
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Come One Alex! It Was the Jewish Space Lasers
As states in the South and Midwest pick up the pieces left by a series of deadly and devastating storms Friday night and early Saturday, “Infowars” host Alex Jones is already spinning conspiracy theories to try to blame it on President Joe Biden.
Jones, who recently lost a fourth lawsuit over his lies that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, told listeners on “The Alex Jones Show” on Monday that the U.S. government developed “weather weapons” in the 1950s.
He cited a talk from former CIA Director John Brennan as supposed evidence of the existence of secret government “geoengineering systems.” In Brennan’s speech, delivered at a 2016 Council on Foreign Relations event, he discussed the geopolitical risks of geoengineering the climate and the costs and benefits of using it as a potential tool against climate change.
“So, they just think you’re stupid and they don’t want you knowing they are doing all of this,” Jones said on his show, claiming these systems would explain “why plants and animals were so much bigger and healthier. But we’ve adapted to live in less air.”
Some researchers have discussed geoengineering as a way to reverse climate change by affecting weather and climate patterns with methods like removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or increasing the reflectivity of the Earth.
Though the concept is a source of legitimate debate, it’s at the root of a number of conspiracy theories, the followers of which believe that these practices are already being carried out in secret so the government can control the weather. There is no evidence that this is the case.
Jones then suggested that Biden may have “ordered” that the power be turned off in Texas in February, when the state was hit by a historic winter storm that led to widespread power outages.
He added: “So the question is did they use weather weapons to cause the tornadoes? That’s a legitimate question to ask.”
No It's Not a Legitimate Question To Ask
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Off They Go, Into the Wild Blue Unemployment Line
The Air Force removed 27 people for not obeying orders to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, a spokeswoman said Monday, apparently marking the U.S. military’s first dismissals of those who refuse the shots.
More than 94 percent of the Air Force is fully vaccinated, according to the service’s data. But tens of thousands of active-duty members across all services have declined the vaccines, a show of defiance in a culture built around following orders. Many of them have sought rarely given exemptions.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek acknowledged that those dismissed Monday were the first active-duty Air Force members to be discharged over the Pentagon’s vaccination requirements for military members.
No other military service has reported discharges over vaccine refusal. The Air Force, which had the military’s earliest deadline to get vaccinated on Nov. 2, was the first service to begin separation proceedings. The Army’s deadline is Wednesday.
The more than two dozen dismissed service members were discharged for not obeying a lawful order, according to Stefanek, and none had sought any type of exemption. All those discharged had less than six years of service, Stefanek said.
With a Dishonorable Discharge on Their Resume
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Is There Another Virus Going Around Making People Stupid?
Miami already has a lot going for it - the sunshine, the beach, the Cuban coffee. Now the city's mayor Francis Suarez wants to put it on the map for another reason: he wants to be the first to create a new way of raising money for the city - through a new cryptocurrency.
MiamiCoin, an experiment he launched this year, could bring in so much revenue that there could be a future scenario where "Miamians would no longer need to pay municipal taxes," the Republican told the BBC.
That is one aspiration, and beyond that, he hopes one day to be able to hand out MiamiCoin to every resident, as a kind of digital dividend.
MiamiCoin is just one part of Mr Suarez's drive to establish Miami as a centre for cryptocurrency.
"I believe we've been presented a very unique opportunity to diversify our economy," he said. "Prior to the pandemic over 60% of Miami's economy was service sector-based. That left us particularly vulnerable to Covid and I won't pass on the chance to change that."
But while Mr Suarez is first out of the blocks, he's not the only mayor in the race for crypto-capital of the US. Hot on his heels is the man about to take over next month as New York mayor, Eric Adams.
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Were They Going To Get Drug Sniffing Dogs to Seek Out Misoprostol?
One of the Ohio cities that voted recently to criminalize abortion within its limits has reversed its decision.
The city of Mason’s council repealed its ordinance in a 6-1 vote Monday, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, after two members who had supported the ban were expelled by voters in November.
The measure made it illegal to procure or perform an abortion within city limits or to “aid and abet” the procedure by providing money, transportation or medical instructions.
The largely symbolic measure, which had taken effect Nov. 24, drew demonstrations by abortion rights backers, who called it unconstitutional.
It saw pushback on multiple fronts.
More than 2,000 residents of the city of about 30,000 located 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Cincinnati signed a petition that would have put the issue to a vote of the people in either May or November, drive organizer Joy Bennett said.
Neither Mason nor nearby Lebanon, which became the first city in Ohio to ban abortions in May, has any abortion clinics or is planning any. The Mason ordinance forbid possession within city limits of abortion-inducing drugs, including prescription misoprostol and mifepristone, but carried no penalties for someone seeking an abortion.
Misoprostol and mifepristone require a prescription and are administered in some doctor’s offices, abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood health centers.
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A Moment Of SCOTUS Sanity
The Supreme Court on Monday left in place New York's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, turning away a challenge by a group of medical providers who sued because it does not include a religious exemption.
Over the dissents of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, the high court rejected the request from the 17 anonymous doctors and nurses, nearly all of whom are Catholic, to block enforcement of the vaccine requirement while proceedings continued.
I Suggest Those Three Only Get Treated by Unvaccinated Health Care Workers
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Another Lawsuit, While the Real People Behind the Coup Are Not Getting Arrested
D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) on Tuesday sued the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, seeking to use a law written to cripple the Ku Klux Klan to exact stiff financial penalties from the far-right groups that Racine alleges were responsible for the violence.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., cites the modern version of an 1871 law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was enacted after the Civil War to safeguard government officials carrying out their duties and protect civil rights. Two similar suits have been filed already this year related to Jan. 6 — one by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and another by a number of police officers who fought the rioters that day.
Racine’s suit, however, is the first effort by a government agency to hold individuals and organizations civilly responsible for the violence at the U.S. Capitol on the day Congress ceremonially confirmed President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
A similar legal tactic led to a $26 million verdict last month against more than a dozen of the nation’s most influential white supremacists and hate groups for their role in the deadly 2017 United the Right rally in Charlottesville. That trial evidence drew heavily on the defendants’ text messages, social media posts and videos to reconstruct how they conspired in advance of the violence.
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CDC doesn't do a good job of reporting around holidays.
200 Million Fully Vaccinated
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 | |
| Dec 15 | |||||
| Dec 14 | 1,904,464 | 239,553,956 | 202,504,037 | ||
| Dec 13 | 1,951,329 | 239,274,656 | 202,246,698 | 117,890 | 1,147 |
| Dec 12 | 1,984,721 | 239,008,166 | 201,975,235 | 116,742 | 1,131 |
| Dec 11 | 2,020,853 | 238,679,707 | 201,688,550 | 116,893 | 1,131 |
| Dec 10 | 1,721,570 | 238,143,066 | 201,279,582 | 118,575 | 1,146 |
| Dec 9 | 1,583,662 | 237,468,725 | 200,717,387 | 118,052 | 1,089 |
| Dec 8 | 1,611,831 | 237,087,380 | 200,400,533 | 118,515 | 1,092 |
| Dec 7 | 1,781,389 | 236,363,835 | 199,687,439 | 117,488 | 1,097 |
| Dec 6 | 1,780,807 | 236,018,871 | 199,313,022 | 117,179 | 1,117 |
| Dec 5 | 2,264,301 | 235,698,738 | 198,962,520 | 103,823 | 1,154 |
| Dec 4 | 2,009,864 | 235,297,964 | 198,592,167 | 105,554 | 1,150 |
| Dec 3 | 1,700,056 | 234,743,864 | 198,211,641 | 106,132 | 1,110 |
| Dec 2 | 1,428,263 | 234,269,053 | 197,838,728 | 96,425 | 975 |
| Dec 1 | 1,116,587 | 233,590,555 | 197,363,116 | 86,412 | 859 |
| Nov 30 | 1,152,647 | 233,207,582 | 197,058,988 | 82,846 | 816 |
| Nov 29 | 937,113 | 232,792,508 | 196,806,194 | 80,178 | 804 |
| Nov 28 | No Data | 72,008 | 719 | ||
| Nov 27 | No Data | 72,139 | 721 | ||
| 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 |
| Feb 16 | 1,716,311 | 39,670,551 | 15,015,434 | 78,292 |
| At Least One Dose | Fully Vaccinated | % of Vaccinated W/ Boosters | |
| % of Total Population | 72.2% | 61.0% | 27.2% |
| % of Population 12+ | 82.5% | 70.4% | 29.5% |
| % of Population 18+ | 84.5% | 72.1% | 41.1% |
| % of Population 65+ | 95.0% | 87.2% | 51.9% |
Next Time Ban the Virus From Entering Your Country, Not Airplanes. It Will Be Just As Effective But Hurt Fewer People.
The government has said that all 11 countries will be removed from the UK's travel red list from 4am on Wednesday.
Angola, Botswana, Eswatini, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe are on the list.
The red list was reintroduced in late November as a precaution after the emergence of the Omicron variant.
But Health Secretary Sajid Javid said it had spread so widely the rules no longer had much purpose.
Or Try This
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So There's Hope For Lauren Boebert?
Considering a career in brain surgery or rocket science? It might well be within reach.
Members of both professions aren't necessarily more clever than the general public, according to a study.
Researchers asked 329 aerospace engineers and 72 neurosurgeons to complete a series of tasks to test their cognition.
The results, published in the British Medical Journal, show few differences with members of the British public.
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Yikes!
Hundreds of millions of devices around the world could be exposed to a newly revealed software vulnerability, as a senior Biden administration cyber official warned executives from major US industries Monday that they need to take action to address "one of the most serious" flaws she has seen in her career.
Chinese-government linked hackers have already begun using the vulnerability, according to Charles Carmakal, senior vice president and chief technology officer for cybersecurity firm Mandiant. Mandiant declined to elaborate on what organizations the hackers were targeting.
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I Can't Even Imagine What Would Be in their Christmas Stockings
There's usually a sense of excitement about what lies beneath the Christmas tree, but for one festive family the biggest surprise was lurking in the branches up above.
Rob and Marcela Wild wasted no time in calling in a professional after they discovered one of Africa's most venomous snakes hiding between the tinsel and baubles at their home in South Africa on Friday.
Having decorated the tree just hours earlier, they spotted their cats staring at its branches.
Rob Wild, a British stock market trader who moved with his Costa Rican wife to South Africa 18 years ago, told CNN on Tuesday: "The cats were peering into the tree and my wife said 'there's probably a mouse in there somewhere.'"
They soon discovered a rather different animal staring back, however -- a boomslang.
"I didn't know what it was at the time but then I Googled what snakes are in our area and it came up immediately as a boomslang. I thought 'holy Moses, this is the king of all poisonous snakes,'" the 55-year-old said.
The boomslang is known as a shy species, but it is one of the most venomous in Africa. The animal's venom causes hemorrhages and can be fatal to humans in small amounts.
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Which Do You Want First, the Good News Or the Bad News?
The first major real-world study of the omicron Covid-19 variant found that it appeared to cause less severe illness in South Africa, where it was first discovered last month, but that two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine offer reduced protection against it.
The analysis, released Tuesday by the country's largest health care administrator, found that on average 29 percent fewer people were being admitted to hospital in the region than previously with the delta variant. However, the study also found that two Pfizer jabs gave 70 percent protection against hospitalization from the new variant, compared with 90 percent seen in the delta wave.
Experts say it's too early to say whether these findings are good or bad news for the rest of the world.
So We Are More Likely to Get Sick, But Not AS Sick
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Mitch Finds Out That If You Lay Down With Boomslangs, You Are Likely to Get Bitten
Trump-backed Kelly Tshibaka, who is challenging Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski for her Alaska seat, is the latest GOP Senate hopeful to say she'll vote to send McConnell packing if she is elected, according to Politico.
"When I defeat Murkowski and become Alaska’s next U.S. Senator, I will not support Mitch McConnell as leader," Tshibaka told Steve Bannon in a Monday appearance on his War Room podcast. "It’s time for new, America First leadership in the Senate.”
Tshibaka's pronouncement sounds a similar note to that of Missouri Senate candidate and disgraced former governor Eric Greitens, who also appeared on Bannon's podcast to serve notice to McConnell.
"We've got to have new leadership in the Senate. The Republican Party is now the MAGA Party," Greitens said. "No more weak, woke, establishment Republicans!" Greitens added when he tweeted out the clip.
Another Trump toady, Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who is running for the state’s open seat, has hinted at something similar.
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Damn the Tornadoes! Full Speed Ahead!
As a catastrophic tornado approached this city Friday, employees of a candle factory — which would later be destroyed — heard the warning sirens and wanted to leave the building. But at least five workers said supervisors warned employees that they would be fired if they left their shifts early. For hours, as word of the coming storm spread, as many as 15 workers beseeched managers to let them take shelter at their own homes, only to have their requests rebuffed, the workers said. Fearing for their safety, some left during their shifts regardless of the repercussions.
McKayla Emery, 21, said in an interview from her hospital bed that workers first asked to leave shortly after tornado sirens sounded outside the factory around 5:30 p.m.
“People had questioned if they could leave or go home,” said Emery, who preferred to stay at work and make extra money. Overtime pay was available, but it wasn’t clear whether those who stayed were offered additional pay. Supervisors and team leaders told employees that leaving would probably jeopardize their jobs, the employees said. “If you leave, you’re more than likely to be fired,” Emery said she overheard managers tell four workers standing near her who wanted to leave. “I heard that with my own ears.”
Those Candles Won't Make Themselves!
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You've Got to Fight For Your Right To Pizza!
A Tennessee man was arrested for threatening staff at a Little Caesars Pizza with an AK-47 - the favorite gun of Second Amendment Patriots™ everywhere! - after being told his pepperoni pizza would take 10 minutes to make.
The suspect, Charles Doty Jr got upset and demanded a free breadstick order and went outside the business to wait for the pizza. When Doty Jr. returned, he had the rifle in hand and was pointing it at employees, demanding his pizza immediately.
This life threatening incident occurred over a $6 pizza.
The suspect was later arrested and taken to jail.
To no one's surprise, this incident occurred just a few months after the Republican-controlled legislature in Tennessee enacted a “permitless carry” law, allowing any random yahoo to carry weapons without any training or licensing from the state.
..........
Two men walked into a Papa John's pizza shop in Utah to pick up the order they'd earlier placed over the phone. Upon being told a computer shutdown had delayed their order, both men became upset and refused to leave until employees called police.
The two customers ran off, sans pizza, into the night, but returned a short while later and fired a gun at the pizza store, shattering glass and injuring one employee.
Thankfully, police quickly found both men, determined the identity of the shooter, and placed him under arrest.
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They Know Who You Are And Where You Live
The identities of Republican lawmakers and aides linked to the Capitol riot by documents provided by former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows will soon be revealed by House investigators, a key congressman said Monday.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), chair of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, told reporters that the documents were “quite revealing.”
He refused to immediately name the Republican legislators revealed in the “information that we received from Mr. Meadows” but said they would be identified in the future.
“Information we have received has been quite revealing about members of Congress involved in the activities of Jan. 6 as well as staff,” he said. Thompson spoke outside the House chambers after the committee voted in favor of a resolution recommending criminal charges against Meadows for failure to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about the assault on the U.S. Capitol.
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If An Idiot Shouts "You're Fired" in a Forest and No One Is There to Hear It, Does He Make a Sound?
Mary Trump attributes her cousin Donald Trump Jr.’s texts during the U.S. Capitol riot to then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to one thing: “cowardice.”
Trump Jr. was among multiple conservative figures who pleaded with Meadows to get then-President Donald Trump to call off the violence from his supporters, according to text messages released Monday by the House select committee investigating the insurrection.
“He’s got to condemn this shit ASAP. The Capitol Police tweet is not enough,” Trump Jr. wrote to Meadows.
“I’m pushing it hard,” Meadows replied. “I agree.”
“We need an Oval Office address. He has to lead now,” Trump Jr. continued. “It has gone too far and gotten out of hand.”
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell asked Mary Trump why Trump Jr. texted Meadows and not his own father.
“I wish that the answer you had given was the right one ― caller ID,” she cracked in response. “But in this particular instance, it’s simply cowardice, because Donny knew that the message he was delivering was the message his father did not want to hear.”
Mary Trump predicted her uncle will lash out at the release of the messages. But his inner circle has “become so small” there may not be anyone left for him to fire, she noted.
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To Serve and Protect --- The Criminals
An email authored by Donald Trump’s chief of staff in the run-up to the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol may help explain military leaders’ reluctance to deploy troops that day: Doing so could have forced troops to choose between following the orders of their direct commanders or obeying the commander in chief of the United States armed forces.
Mark Meadows wrote that the National Guard would be deployed to “‘protect pro Trump people’ and that many more would be available on standby,” according to the resolution by the House committee investigating Jan. 6 that recommends referring criminal contempt of Congress charges against Meadows to the Department of Justice.
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Come One Alex! It Was the Jewish Space Lasers
As states in the South and Midwest pick up the pieces left by a series of deadly and devastating storms Friday night and early Saturday, “Infowars” host Alex Jones is already spinning conspiracy theories to try to blame it on President Joe Biden.
Jones, who recently lost a fourth lawsuit over his lies that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre was a hoax, told listeners on “The Alex Jones Show” on Monday that the U.S. government developed “weather weapons” in the 1950s.
He cited a talk from former CIA Director John Brennan as supposed evidence of the existence of secret government “geoengineering systems.” In Brennan’s speech, delivered at a 2016 Council on Foreign Relations event, he discussed the geopolitical risks of geoengineering the climate and the costs and benefits of using it as a potential tool against climate change.
“So, they just think you’re stupid and they don’t want you knowing they are doing all of this,” Jones said on his show, claiming these systems would explain “why plants and animals were so much bigger and healthier. But we’ve adapted to live in less air.”
Some researchers have discussed geoengineering as a way to reverse climate change by affecting weather and climate patterns with methods like removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or increasing the reflectivity of the Earth.
Though the concept is a source of legitimate debate, it’s at the root of a number of conspiracy theories, the followers of which believe that these practices are already being carried out in secret so the government can control the weather. There is no evidence that this is the case.
Jones then suggested that Biden may have “ordered” that the power be turned off in Texas in February, when the state was hit by a historic winter storm that led to widespread power outages.
He added: “So the question is did they use weather weapons to cause the tornadoes? That’s a legitimate question to ask.”
No It's Not a Legitimate Question To Ask
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Off They Go, Into the Wild Blue Unemployment Line
The Air Force removed 27 people for not obeying orders to get vaccinated against the coronavirus, a spokeswoman said Monday, apparently marking the U.S. military’s first dismissals of those who refuse the shots.
More than 94 percent of the Air Force is fully vaccinated, according to the service’s data. But tens of thousands of active-duty members across all services have declined the vaccines, a show of defiance in a culture built around following orders. Many of them have sought rarely given exemptions.
Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek acknowledged that those dismissed Monday were the first active-duty Air Force members to be discharged over the Pentagon’s vaccination requirements for military members.
No other military service has reported discharges over vaccine refusal. The Air Force, which had the military’s earliest deadline to get vaccinated on Nov. 2, was the first service to begin separation proceedings. The Army’s deadline is Wednesday.
The more than two dozen dismissed service members were discharged for not obeying a lawful order, according to Stefanek, and none had sought any type of exemption. All those discharged had less than six years of service, Stefanek said.
With a Dishonorable Discharge on Their Resume
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Is There Another Virus Going Around Making People Stupid?
Miami already has a lot going for it - the sunshine, the beach, the Cuban coffee. Now the city's mayor Francis Suarez wants to put it on the map for another reason: he wants to be the first to create a new way of raising money for the city - through a new cryptocurrency.
MiamiCoin, an experiment he launched this year, could bring in so much revenue that there could be a future scenario where "Miamians would no longer need to pay municipal taxes," the Republican told the BBC.
That is one aspiration, and beyond that, he hopes one day to be able to hand out MiamiCoin to every resident, as a kind of digital dividend.
MiamiCoin is just one part of Mr Suarez's drive to establish Miami as a centre for cryptocurrency.
"I believe we've been presented a very unique opportunity to diversify our economy," he said. "Prior to the pandemic over 60% of Miami's economy was service sector-based. That left us particularly vulnerable to Covid and I won't pass on the chance to change that."
But while Mr Suarez is first out of the blocks, he's not the only mayor in the race for crypto-capital of the US. Hot on his heels is the man about to take over next month as New York mayor, Eric Adams.
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Were They Going To Get Drug Sniffing Dogs to Seek Out Misoprostol?
One of the Ohio cities that voted recently to criminalize abortion within its limits has reversed its decision.
The city of Mason’s council repealed its ordinance in a 6-1 vote Monday, The Cincinnati Enquirer reported, after two members who had supported the ban were expelled by voters in November.
The measure made it illegal to procure or perform an abortion within city limits or to “aid and abet” the procedure by providing money, transportation or medical instructions.
The largely symbolic measure, which had taken effect Nov. 24, drew demonstrations by abortion rights backers, who called it unconstitutional.
It saw pushback on multiple fronts.
More than 2,000 residents of the city of about 30,000 located 25 miles (40 kilometers) northeast of Cincinnati signed a petition that would have put the issue to a vote of the people in either May or November, drive organizer Joy Bennett said.
Neither Mason nor nearby Lebanon, which became the first city in Ohio to ban abortions in May, has any abortion clinics or is planning any. The Mason ordinance forbid possession within city limits of abortion-inducing drugs, including prescription misoprostol and mifepristone, but carried no penalties for someone seeking an abortion.
Misoprostol and mifepristone require a prescription and are administered in some doctor’s offices, abortion clinics and Planned Parenthood health centers.
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A Moment Of SCOTUS Sanity
The Supreme Court on Monday left in place New York's COVID-19 vaccine mandate for health care workers, turning away a challenge by a group of medical providers who sued because it does not include a religious exemption.
Over the dissents of Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch, the high court rejected the request from the 17 anonymous doctors and nurses, nearly all of whom are Catholic, to block enforcement of the vaccine requirement while proceedings continued.
I Suggest Those Three Only Get Treated by Unvaccinated Health Care Workers
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Another Lawsuit, While the Real People Behind the Coup Are Not Getting Arrested
D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine (D) on Tuesday sued the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers over the Jan. 6 attack on Congress, seeking to use a law written to cripple the Ku Klux Klan to exact stiff financial penalties from the far-right groups that Racine alleges were responsible for the violence.
The lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., cites the modern version of an 1871 law known as the Ku Klux Klan Act, which was enacted after the Civil War to safeguard government officials carrying out their duties and protect civil rights. Two similar suits have been filed already this year related to Jan. 6 — one by Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-Miss.), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and another by a number of police officers who fought the rioters that day.
Racine’s suit, however, is the first effort by a government agency to hold individuals and organizations civilly responsible for the violence at the U.S. Capitol on the day Congress ceremonially confirmed President Biden’s 2020 election victory.
A similar legal tactic led to a $26 million verdict last month against more than a dozen of the nation’s most influential white supremacists and hate groups for their role in the deadly 2017 United the Right rally in Charlottesville. That trial evidence drew heavily on the defendants’ text messages, social media posts and videos to reconstruct how they conspired in advance of the violence.
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