Mon - Why is Howard Kurtz Confused?

US Vaccine Data - We Have Now Administered 503 Million Shots  (Population 333 Million)





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We're Having A Wet Winter in California


Reservoirs are still low, but they take time to refill and it may take the spring snow melt.

Lake Meade level is 1,066.09.  That's 162.91 feet below full pool of 1,229.00.
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Afghanistan is Dying

The World Health Organization is warning of millions of children suffering malnutrition, and the United Nations says 97% of Afghans will soon be living below the poverty line.

For millions living in camps for the displaced or sitting outside government ministries seeking help, the only source of warmth is to huddle around open wood-burning fires.

Nearly 80% of Afghanistan’s previous government’s budget came from the international community. That money, now cut off, financed hospitals, schools, factories and government ministries. In the Taliban’s Afghanistan there is no money. Sanctions have crippled banks while the U.N., the United States and others struggle to figure out how to get hundreds of millions of dollars of humanitarian aid to Afghans while bypassing the Taliban, even as there are no immediate signs of the widespread corruption that characterized the previous administration.

For many of Afghanistan’s poorest, bread is their only staple. Women line up outside bakeries in the city, young children arrive before dawn to get bread. The majority scramble to find food, and fuel. The statistics provided by the U.N. are grim: Almost 24 million people in Afghanistan, around 60% percent of the population, suffer from acute hunger. As many as 8.7 million Afghans are coping with famine.

But The Taliban Are Taking Action On the Important Matters

The Taliban have said Afghan women seeking to travel long distances by road should be offered transport only if accompanied by a male relative.

The directive, issued on Sunday, is the latest curb on women's rights since the Islamist group seized power in August.

The majority of secondary schools remain shut for girls, while most women have been banned from working.
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Keep Your Unvaccinated Ass Off Of My Flight!

The federal government should consider requiring people to be vaccinated to fly domestically, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday.

The US currently requires non-citizens coming to the US by air to be fully vaccinated. Fauci said it’s worth considering broadening those requirements.

“You've got to ask yourself why it is you're making that requirement,” Fauci, director for the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told MSNBC.

“If you're making a requirement for vaccination for people to get on planes who are coming into the country, that's understandable. You don't want to bring more cases into the country. But if you're talking about requiring vaccination to get on a plane domestically, that is just another one of the requirements that I think is reasonable to consider,” Fauci added.

Fauci did not say whether he had made this recommendation to President Biden, but added that a vaccination requirement for air travel creates more incentive to get vaccinated in the first place.

And Your So-Called "Brain", Too!
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How's Biden Doing Among Black Voters?  They Were Critical to His Win in 2020.

Biden’s approval among Black Americans remains higher than among voters more broadly. According to a Politico/Morning Consult poll of 1,998 voters released this month, 58 percent of Black respondents said they approved of the job Biden was doing as president, compared to 43 percent of all voters.

However, Biden’s approval among Black voters has been sliding throughout the year. A poll by HIT Strategies showed that 48 percent of Black voters said in November that Biden was addressing their needs, compared to 66 percent of respondents in June. The poll reported a margin of sampling error of 3.1 percentage points.

Black people are particularly concerned that the two bills that have become cornerstones of Black-centered policy — the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 and the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — have yet to reach the Senate floor after they passed in the Democratic-controlled House this year. At the same time, even the critics allow that Biden has a checklist of achievements that, while they are not specific to Black people, serve their best interests.

As If He Needed a Reason to Make Voting Rights a Priority
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What Has Biden Done?

490 million vaccine dosages.

Vaccination Rate up from < 1% to 71%

Schools open up from 46% to > 99%

6 Million new jobs, the most of any President in the first year.

Unemployment down from 6.3% to 4.2%

Lowest unemployment claims since 1969

Pass the American Rescue Plan (remember that one?)

Pass the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan (it was finally infrastructure week)

No other G7 country had reached pre-pandemic output by end of 3Q 2021

40 Federal Judges appointed by Biden (And 80% of those confirmed judges are women, with 53% being people of color)

And He Ended Our Longest War
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Where Are Our Leaders of This Stature?






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I Hope This Tweet Speaks For All of Us






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Schmeck is a Schmuck







"Schmuck" is German for Jewels and "Jewels" Refer to a Man's ... 
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This Schmuck Is All Talk

Two months ago, Dan Bongino sounded ready to give up one of the best slots in conservative talk radio over his objection to his employer’s coronavirus vaccine mandate.

“You can have me, or you can have the mandate, but you can’t have both,” he said on Oct. 18, threatening to stop hosting his three-hour program on Cumulus Media — which launched in March — if the radio giant did not back down from health requirements imposed on employees this fall.

A lot has happened since then, but not much has changed for Bongino and his bosses. He is still hosting the same show, even though Cumulus Media does not appear to have changed its mandate. That’s led some radio hosts and industry observers to question Bongino’s commitment to his ultimatum. Talk radio historian Brian Rosenwald said “there was a stunt element to it.”

Or As Our British Friends Might Say, He is "All Mouth and No Trousers”.  
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Kurtz Want America To Have No Joy

However, Howard Kurtz of Fox News did not acknowledge that the primary cause of the distrust he spoke of was lies propagated by Fox News. Then Kurtz entered into the following exchange with Emily Jashinsky of the ultra-rightist Federalist:

Kurtz: In his speech, Biden said people's choices are affected by the dangerous misinformation on cable TV and social media. Okay, but here MSNBC's Joy Reid went way further than that. Let's take a look.

Reid (video): Probably the most vaccinated company in America is Fox News. They're all vaccinated. They're gonna live through this and let their viewers and their fans die. Because they don't give a damn. It's just clicks to them. They don't care what happens. It's just fun for them.

Kurtz: So Joy Reid says says Fox News wants you to die. What?

Jashinsky: And that's exactly what she said. And this is just one of the many fireable offences she commits regularly on that show. Even though under normal standards those would be considered fireable offences. And she gets very little criticism from her peers. This isn't normal. If somebody on the right said said this it would be a huge story because it's so outrageous. It's so extreme. And it's a great example of why the left, why the Biden White House, why Democrats actually struggle to get those vaccine numbers up.












I Can See Why He Might Get Confused.  Fox News Fires People For Telling the Truth
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And the [Bleep] Goes On





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Heavy Prayers?  A Little Jab Would Have Done Him a Lot More Good.

A podcaster who opposed the COVID-19 vaccine contracted the disease and was on a ventilator Saturday after he attended the right-wing “ReAwaken America” event in Dallas early this month, according to his podcast network and conspiracy theorist attorney Lin Wood.

Podcast network Frog News said on the social media site Telegram that Doug Kuzma’s last communication with them included a photo of him posing with ivermectin, the antiparasitic medicine that many claim treats COVID despite federal health agencies’ warnings not to use it for such purposes, and other chemicals after the three-day event that featured Michael Flynn, who briefly served as Donald Trump’s national security adviser and later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.

As of Saturday, Kuzma was “sedated and on a ventilator.” He was “not conscious,” noted a Frog News message. “Doug needs heavy, heavy prayers.”

However, This is the Response






Biological Agents?  Like the COVID Virus?  





Those Of Them Who Survive Win Natural "Immunity"
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Go Forth With Your Fourth

An Israeli hospital began administering fourth coronavirus vaccine doses to a test group of health-care workers on Monday, in what it’s calling the world’s first trial of its kind, as the country weighs approval for a wider campaign for at-risk Israelis in efforts to stem the rapid spike in infections by the omicron variant.

The trial at Sheba Medical Center in central Israel involves 150 medical workers who received third doses before Aug. 20 and have antibody counts below 700, signifying low protection, according to a statement from the hospital. The trial is being carried out in conjunction with Israel’s Health Ministry.

“It’s one jab in the shoulder, but one giant leap for mankind,” said Jacob Levee, director of the hospital’s heart transplant unit and the first recipient of the fourth vaccine at Sheba.

He said he wanted to get vaccinated to protect his heart transplant patients, whose “immunity following the third dose has diminished significantly, so they’re exposed,” according to research at Sheba.
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Are These Governors Really That Dumb?   Or Are They That Cynical and Heartless?

At least five Republican-led states have extended unemployment benefits to people who’ve lost jobs over vaccine mandates — and a smattering of others may soon follow.

Workers who quit or are fired for cause — including for defying company policy — are generally ineligible for jobless benefits. But Arkansas, Florida, Iowa, Kansas and Tennessee have carved out exceptions for those who won’t submit to the multi-shot coronavirus vaccine regimens that many companies now require. Similar ideas have been floated in Wyoming, Wisconsin and Missouri.

Critics contend that these states are incentivizing people to skip shots that public health experts say offer the best line of defense against the coronavirus. Business leaders and industry groups have argued against the rule changes because, they say, companies would shoulder much of the costs. And the efforts are playing out as the Biden administration is pressing immunization rules for private companies and as coronavirus cases are surging again because of the fast-spreading omicron variant.

Old, Cynical, and Heartless.  Kahlid's Next Single?



Or Should It Be "Killing Them Softly With Their Rules"?


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Hong Kong Is Losing It ... Talent That Is

With China exercising ever-tighter control over Hong Kong, the city is hewing to the country’s strict “zero covid” policy extolled by Beijing as evidence of a superior political system. Yet the approach has largely cut off Hong Kong from both China and the world — a severe blow for a place that built its success on global connections. Even more than recent political changes, the authorities’ refusal to adapt to living with the virus is eroding Hong Kong’s viability as an international city, according to almost two dozen diplomats, chambers of commerce, recruiters, pilots and other expatriates.

The resultant brain drain is altering the face of the financial hub, which some Western companies now consider a hardship post, as fewer people are willing to take the places of those leaving. The number of overseas professionals and investors admitted to Hong Kong under its general employment program dropped from about 41,000 in 2019 to 15,000 last year and 10,000 through the third quarter of 2021, immigration data shows. With quarantine rules unlikely to be lifted within the next year, departures of foreign businesspeople and other expatriates are set to accelerate.

“The long-term damage has already been done to Hong Kong’s viability,” said one senior Western diplomat. “There is an absolute lack of predictability that businesses don’t like.”

Turbulence at Cathay Pacific: China’s threats loom over one of Asia’s leading airlines

Authorities have defended the approach, insisting on the need to keep the virus out — a goal health experts say is unsustainable — as they prioritize reopening to mainland China. The strict measures already included collecting stool samples from young children in hotel quarantine. This month, the omicron variant’s spread led Hong Kong to further tighten rules, lengthening quarantines for most arrivals and threatening holiday travel plans with sudden flight bans for airlines that unwittingly bring in even a few infected passengers.

In a survey released this month, the British Chamber of Commerce found that 70 percent of respondents hoping to add staff in Hong Kong had encountered difficulties, with many citing quarantine restrictions.
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If Howard Kurtz is Confused, It Must Be Because He Watches his Own Network