February 10, 2021: Second Day of Impeachment Trial - Storming the Maternity Wing?

 

2/10/21: On the second day of the impeachment trial, Stacey Plaskett, the delegate representing the U.S. Virgin Islands, explains that she was a staffer on Capitol Hill on 9/11. 

Almost every day, I remember that 44 Americans gave their lives to stop the plane that was headed to this Capitol building. I thank them every day for saving my life and the life of so many others. Those Americans sacrificed their lives for love of country, honor, duty, all the things that America means. The Capitol stands because of people like that.

Trump lawyers put up lame defense.

 

A film clip is shown of Sen. Romney running down a hall after Officer Eugene Goodman warns him the mob is coming from the other direction. A second shows VP Pence, his wife, and daughter, being led down a back stairway. Plaskett reminds senators that the vice president was never ushered out of the building entirely. 

Ms. Plaskett also plays audio of terrified staff members from Ms. Pelosi’s office, who were barricaded in a room during the rampage. “We need the Capitol Police to come into the hallway,” said one, whispering into a phone in hopes that the rioters outside would not hear. Plaskett’s presentation includes sounds of rioters pounding on the door of the room where aides have taken refuge. 

“Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!” the crowd can be heard chanting. Outside the Capitol, Plaskett notes, a gallows has been set up, with rioters howling, “Bring out Pence!” 

One rioter tapes a video saying, “He’s a total treasonous pig.”

 

The attackers, she tells Senate jurors, were searching for Ms. Pelosi. Plaskett points out that one intruder photographed sitting at a desk in her office was carrying a 950,000-volt stun gun walking stick. “Where are you, Nancy?” some of the rioters called out. “We’re looking for you!” 

“Again, that is a mob that was sent by the president of the United States to stop the certification of an election,” Ms. Plaskett tells the jurors.

 

The vice president, the speaker of the House — the first and second in line to the presidency — were performing their constitutional duties presiding over the election certification and they were put in danger because President Trump put his own desires, his own need for power, over his duty to the Constitution and our democratic process.

 

“President Trump,” she added, “put a target on their backs and his mob broke into the Capitol to hunt them down.”

 

It’s a shocking presentation.

 

“Today’s presentation was powerful and emotional reliving a terrorist attack on our nation’s capital,” Sen. Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, admits. “But there was very little said about how specific conduct of the president’s satisfies the legal standard” of convicting him of high crimes and misdemeanors.

 

We already know. Cruz is going to be a coward. His mind is made up. He’s going to vote to acquit, because he has a career in politics that he cares more about than democracy or the U.S. Constitution.

 

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“Everyone I spoke with understood that storming the maternity wing was not part of the plan.” 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar

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Trump’s lawyers insist that he never intended to stir up violence, even if it sounded exactly like he did. When he told supporters on January 6 to “fight like hell,” and used the word “fight” twenty times in his final big speech as president, that was NOT inciting a mob. They put together an 11-minute montage of Democratic politicians and left-leaning celebrities like Madonna, telling people to “fight” for various reasons. (This blogger is not aware of any time that Madonna told fans to fight for anything and they then went out and rioted and injured 140 police officers.) 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar, having been included in the montage, responds on Twitter: “My first political fight was to guarantee new moms and their babies a 48-hour hospital stay. Everyone I spoke with understood that storming the maternity wing was not part of the plan. Context matters, huh?” 

One of Trump’s defense lawyers actually insists, “no thinking person would take his words seriously.”

April 11, 2021: The Republican Party is Headed for "Crazy Town."

 

4/11/21: Additional excerpts from former House Speaker John Boehner’s book are released. The lifelong Republican bemoans the fact that under Trump, the party has morphed into a “clown car.” 

What is the destination of the car? 

 “Crazy town.”

 

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“What struck me, especially after the election, was, here’s all these people loyal to Donald Trump, and he abused them. He stepped all over their loyalty to him by continuing to say things that just weren’t true.” 

John Boehner

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The riot on January 6 left the former Speaker feeling nothing but “disgust” for what the Republican Party has become. As USA Today explains, Boehner sounded a warning on January 7. 

“I once said the party of Lincoln and Reagan is off taking a nap,” he said on his @SpeakerBoehner account. “The nap has become a nightmare for our nation. The GOP must awaken. The invasion of our Capitol by a mob, incited by lies from some entrusted with power [emphasis added], is a disgrace to all who sacrificed to build our Republic.”

 

Now he elaborated:  “I don’t think it was just about him showing up at a rally on Jan. 6^th…The comments that were made all summer about the election was going to be stolen from him, all the follow-up noise that occurred after the election – I kept looking for the facts.” 

(Blogger’s note: So did I.)

 

USA Today noted, “There has been no credible evidence to support Trump’s repeated allegations of election malfeasance.”

 

“What struck me, especially after the election, was, here’s all these people loyal to Donald Trump, and he abused them,” Boehner said. “He stepped all over their loyalty to him by continuing to say things that just weren’t true.”

 

In the book, he describes Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as “Lucifer in the flesh.” Freedom Caucus members as “political terrorists” and “far-right knuckleheads.” Former Alaska governor and vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin as “one of the chief crazies.”

November 20, 2021: If I Get Vaccinated Can I Be My Own Nightlight?

11/20/21: You can’t say Republican lawmakers and right-wing opinion makers don’t have their priorities straight in a pandemic era. Recently, Sen. Ted Cruz took on Big Bird after the Sesame Street character said he had been vaccinated to protect him and his loved ones from the virus. 

Average number of new daily COVID-19 cases in the U.S., in the seven-day period ending November 18: 94,260. 

So, focus on Big Bird?

 

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Ted Cruz and GOP ignore the “pandemic of the unvaccinated” and go hunting for Big Bird.

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Cruz called it “government propaganda…for your five year old” and the usual right-wing suspects erupted. He was supported by Lisa Boothe, a Fox News contributor, who compared it to “brainwashing children” and insisted they were not at risk from COVID. On Newsmax, Steven Cortes warned viewers, “This kind of propaganda is actually evil. Your children are not statistically at risk, and should not be pressured into a brand new treatment. Do Not Comply!”

 

In Kansas, a group of anti-vaxxers wearing yellow stars showed up for a Special Committee on Government Overreach meeting. They wanted to show that if you were forced to wear a mask in a store or get a life-saving shot, that was the same as being herded into a gas chamber at Auschwitz because you were Jewish. 

So close! 

All this came on the heels of Newsmax host Emerald Robinson warning that if you took the Moderna shot the government would be able to track you everywhere because the vaccine would make you bioluminescent. She even worked the religious angle to good purpose, if your purpose was peddling nonsense. Robinson tweeted: “Dear Christians: The vaccines contain a bioluminescent marker called LUCIFERASE so that you can be tracked. Read the last book of the New Testament to see how this ends.”

In other words, you’d end up looking like this – unless Alex Jones was right, and then within a year of taking any of the shots you’d be dead. 

Do you want to glow in the dark, like a jelly fish?

Or magnetized. 

There has been a lot of right-wing nonsense in this regard, starting from the top, with Donald J. “Drink Bleach” Trump.

 

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IN ANY CASE, this aging blogger just had his COVID booster shot; and he is not glowing in the dark. Nor, no matter how hard he tries, can he pick up paperclips with his magnetized fingers. Still, if Alex Jones is right, I’ve only got three months to live since I had my first vaccine last February, and then I’m bound for hell in a handbasket because I’m a liberal, I guess. 

In the time I have remaining, I will continue to check out the facts. See, for example, my post on all the medical groups recommending masks and shots. And since Trump fans can be proudly fact-averse if they don’t like the facts you present, I like to check red state stats to see if medical experts in GOP-controlled states are “lying” about vaccines.

 

Looking at the following numbers, see if you spot any trends. Trump fans, you may have to squint. The Texas Department of State Health Services reports that you are twenty times more likely to die from COVID-19 if you are unvaccinated and catch the virus than if you’ve had the shots. 

The Alabama Department of Public Health notes that 94.1% of all deaths between August 1 and August 18 in that state were unvaccinated humans. In Florida, six unvaccinated members of one extended family died. 

Otherwise, Gov. Ron DeSantis seems to be hiding the totals, while fighting every mask mandate in court.

 

Let’s do more red-state facts. The Tennessee Department of Health warned this past summer that 97% of hospitalizations and 98% of deaths were unvaccinated individuals. In Mississippi, between January 1 and July 22, only 37 fully-vaccinated persons died, vs. 2,363 persons unvaccinated, or 98.4%. The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare puts the percentage of deaths, vaccinated as against unvaccinated, at 12% vs. 88%. Montana reported that 78% of COVID deaths in the last reporting period were unvaccinated persons. Their average age at death was 71. Those who were vaccinated and died were, on average, 83 years old. 

The South Carolina situation is in line with other red states: 77.5% of recent deaths have come among the not fully-vaccinated. 

Health authorities in Oklahoma put the percentage of hospitalized at 91% unvaccinated and 98% of the dead. 

Nebraska reports that 122 fully-vaccinated individuals died between Jan. 1-Oct. 23, as opposed to 1,101 not fully vaccinated, or 90%. 

Since vaccines became available in December, West Virginia numbers show 225 deaths of fully-vaccinated persons vs. 2,877 (92.7%) who had not had shots.

 

In Iowa, according to the Iowa Public Health Department, 79% of all patients hospitalized with coronavirus in August were unvaccinated, and 86% of those in intensive care. Or, to put it plainly. There’s a trend and that trend is clear. “We have many tools we need to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe, and the single most important tool we have is the vaccine, which is highly effective at preventing serious illness, hospitalization and death,” says Kathy Garcia, the acting  director of the IPHD.

 

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AS OF NOVEMBER 18, subject to slight adjustment, CDC reports that we are averaging more than 1,000 daily deaths from COVID-19, a fearful toll. Now, it’s falling almost entirely on the ranks of the ill-informed, the anti-vaxxers, and science-averse relatives and friends. 

(I don’t agree with one syllable of what many of these poor people say regarding vaccines and masks, but it’s still sad to see so many of them die.)

 

The U.S. death toll as of that date now stands at: 768,619.

 

So? Any reason to vaccinate children, as Big Bird says we should? True, they aren’t at high risk of dying if they get infected themselves. If infected, however, they are at substantial risk of spreading the virus to grandma. 

Maybe at Thanksgiving, too. 

And if grandma isn’t vaccinated? Too bad, granny. I hope, if you lived in Texas, you didn’t vote for Ted Cruz.