More to ignore, Book 17....

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Like The Remains Of Old West Shootout Victims In A Ghost Town, 3 Siblings Found Dead Of COVID.
Rule of Claw

Three siblings found dead on same day died of COVID-19, coroner says

CONEMAUGH TOWNSHIP, Pa. – The deaths of three siblings whose bodies were found on a Conemaugh Township property on Oct. 25 is being ruled natural, Cambria County Coroner Jeffrey Lees

www.tribdem.com

CONEMAUGH TOWNSHIP, Pa. – The deaths of three siblings whose bodies were found on a Conemaugh Township property on Oct. 25 is being ruled natural, Cambria County Coroner Jeffrey Lees said Wednesday.

Ruth Kinsey, 68, and brothers Richland Kinsey, 70, and Donald Kinsey, 62, all died from COVID-19, Lees said. All had underlying medical conditions, he said.

The bodies of Ruth and Richard Kinsey were found inside a Baiker Street home. Donald Kinsey was found in a camper on the property, located near Daisytown.

“At the time of the deaths, it was odd that you have three individuals deceased within a short period of time in the same proximity to each other,” Lees said. “That’s why we did the autopsy, the toxicology and microbiology tests. The forensic facts are what they are.”

Ruth Kinsey was found in the kitchen, while Richard Kinsey was found seated in a chair in the living room. Donald Kinsey was found in bed in the camper where he lived, which was parked in the barn next door.

Lees said he was unsure if the family had been vaccinated.

The family dog was turned over to the Cambria County Humane Society in Richland Township.......

 

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Denver shooter’s ties to far-right figures on social media underline misogyny’s key role in violence
David Neiwert

 

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Court Drop-Kicks Oklahoma Guard Anti-Vax Suit Because BRO, DO YOU EVEN LAW?

OMG, get the shot you selfish assholes!

www.wonkette.com

Is it cool when a federal judge says your "arguments both misconceive and trivialize the Fourth Amendment"? Asking for the state of Oklahoma, which got whacked last night by a federal judge over its objection to a vaccine mandate for its National Guard troops.

President Joe Biden's vaccine mandate for the federal work force is headed for the Supreme Court, but challenges to his military mandate appear to be striking out on all fronts, as Judge Stephen Friot of the Western District of Oklahoma joined Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the DC district court in dropkicking the overhyped claims of active military members that Uncle Joe is forcing them into a "Hobson's choice" between their jobs and their bodily integrity.

On December 2, the state of Oklahoma raced into court demanding that the court restrain the federal vaccine mandate generally. It was not, to all appearances, a well-argued complaint. But what it lacked in competence, it more than made up for in volume.

"The President unilaterally has issued this diktat without any semblance of a congressional authorization," it screeched, vomiting out a litany of supposed illegality: "The federal government, it is clear, is without power to invade the police powers of the States concerning health, safety, and morals. In addition, the separation of powers and the non-delegation principle preclude this vaccine mandate both because it cannot be the product of a statute guided by an intelligible principle and, more broadly, because this vaccine mandate amounts to lawmaking, which rests within the exclusive preserve of Congress."

Which is all well and good, but unless you're getting a Justice Gorsuch or Alito to fill in those anger Mad Libs, you'll probably have to argue with more specificity than that to get relief from a trial judge.

As Judge Friot noted, the Executive Order the State inveighed against had nothing to do with the military, active duty or reserve. So on Dec. 27, Oklahoma amended its complaint to accuse the federal government of "trying to disarm the State of Oklahoma from protecting itself, its territory, and its citizens" on the theory that all the Guardsmen would refuse to get the shots, leaving Oklahoma unprotected from the rapacious overtures of its Texas neighbors. Or ... well, Oklahoma doesn't say who it needs protecting from, but that's the least of the problem here, as the court notes........
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As for the individual Guardsmen who relied on the state's appallingly bad legal advice, particularly those who attempted to sign onto this suit as anonymous plaintiffs, the court "strongly urges" the DOD to exercise forbearance against "the individual non-compliant Guard members [who] did not have the benefit of well-informed leadership at the highest level of the Oklahoma Guard."......

 

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Why That Peter Navarro Interview Isn't Enough To Charge Him with Sedition - emptywheel

The takeaway from Peter Navarro made in his book and in some interviews ought to be that he is a liar who has nevertheless admitted his goal was to bring maximal pressure on Mike Pence. As such, it means he shares a stated goal of a number of January 6 defendants who have already pled guilty.

www.emptywheel.net

......I’d like to talk about why this book and interview are not enough to charge Navarro with sedition, and in fact the current media frenzy into is is actually counterproductive to the legal investigation.

A BOOK AND AN INTERVIEW ARE NOT EVIDENCE​

The most important reason why this book and Navarro’s interviews on it are not enough to charge him is that books are probably not admissible evidence.

This is retroactive telling about what, Navarro claims, he and Steve Bannon and others planned to do. While the book might be part of a conspiracy to cover up what Navarro and Bannon planned, in and of itself, it’s not clear it would be admissible at trial (though it could be useful at trial for other reasons, such as challenging any testimony Navarro gave).

Instead, you’d need to get all the texts and memos Navarro says documents this effort, the former of which may require seizing his phone with a probable cause warrant......

 

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Thread by @Bob_Wachter on Thread Reader App

Thread by @Bob_Wachter: My latest tweets have mostly been bad news, which saddens me, particularly during holiday season. Today I’ll take you to my Happy Place, with some thoughts on why we could be in good...…

threadreaderapp.com

 

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/28/trump-idolatry-has-undermined-religious-faith/

Trump idolatry has undermined religious faith
Jennifer Rubin

......While lovers of democracy around the world view these developments in horror, we should not lose track of the damage the MAGA movement has wrought to religious values. Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian and former adviser to President George W. Bush, explains in a column for the Atlantic how a recent speech from Donald Trump Jr. reflects the inversion of religious faith. “The former president’s son,” Wehner writes, “has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have ‘gotten us nothing.’ ”

Wehner continues:

It’s worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go. Decency is for suckers.

Understanding this phenomenon goes a long way toward explaining the MAGA crowd’s very unreligious cruelty toward immigrants, its selfish refusal to vaccinate to protect the most vulnerable and its veneration of a vulgar, misogynistic cult leader. If you wonder how so many “people of faith” can behave in such ways, understand that their “faith” has become hostile to traditional religious values such as kindness, empathy, self-restraint, grace, honesty and humility......

 

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House GOP committee deletes tweet spreading disinformation on Covid boosters after backlash

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee deleted a tweet Friday morning that spread disinformation about Covid-19 booster shots.

www.cnn.com

House GOP committee deletes tweet spreading disinformation about Covid-19 booster shots​

Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee deleted a tweet Friday morning that spread disinformation about Covid-19 booster shots.

The false tweet from the House Judiciary Committee Republicans' official account, which was posted Thursday afternoon, read: "If the booster shots work, why don't they work?" The tweet received a wave of backlash before it was taken down and came at a time when Covid cases are spiking across the US following the Omicron variant's emergence, and public health experts are encouraging people to get boosted to protect themselves and others.

While most Republicans have said they support Covid-19 vaccines but oppose mandates, many members of the GOP -- especially those on the far-right -- have continued to spread disinformation, conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine sentiments. Elected Republicans have crusaded against mandates as part of their resistance to the Biden administration's pandemic response efforts.

According to CNN's latest polling, a 65% majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents report having received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine. (By contrast, only about one-quarter see vaccination requirements as an acceptable way to increase the vaccination rate.)

As for booster shots, they do work. Multiple studies from multiple countries show that people who have received booster shots are much less likely to get infected with Covid-19, and if they do get infected, they overwhelmingly have mild illness.

The people filling hospital beds are mostly unvaccinated or were vaccinated months ago, and their immunity has worn off. The vaccines do not fully prevent infection, but they provide very good protection against it and severe disease and extremely high protection against death.

The GOP House Judiciary Committee is led by Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who has been fiercely opposed to vaccine mandates and has declined to say whether has received a Covid-19 shot. Jordan also revealed during an interview with a local news outlet that he had Covid over the summer. The spokesperson who represents his office and the committee did not immediately return a request for comment.

 

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Virginia attorney general sues town over police treatment of Black people after Caron Nazario investigation

More than a year after two policemen pepper-sprayed a Black and Latino US Army officer, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has sued the town of Windsor, alleging its police department has discriminated against African Americans and violated their civil rights.

www.cnn.com

Virginia Attorney General sues town over police treatment of Black people after Caron Nazario investigation​

More than a year after two policemen pepper-sprayed a Black and Latino US Army officer, Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring has sued the town of Windsor, alleging its police department has discriminated against African Americans and violated their civil rights.

It is the first case brought under a new law that allows the state's leading law-enforcement officer "to sue to stop systemic violations of Virginians' rights," according to a release from Herring's office.

The suit was spurred by an incident in December 2020, when two Windsor Police Department officers pulled over 2nd Lt. Caron Nazario and repeatedly used pepper spray on him and pointed their guns at him, according to the release.

"While our investigation was spurred by the egregious treatment against Lt. Nazario that we all saw in bodycam footage, we discovered that this incident was indicative of much larger problems within the department," Herring said in the statement.

"Our months-long investigation uncovered huge disparities in enforcement against African American drivers, and a troubling lack of policies and procedures to prevent discriminatory or unconstitutional policing," Herring said. "We even discovered evidence that officers were actually being trained to go 'fishing' and engage in pretextual stops."

The suit was filed Thursday in Isle of Wight Circuit Court. It alleges Windsor "violated the Virginia Human Rights Act ('VHRA') and the Virginia Public Integrity and Law Enforcement Misconduct Act ('VPLEM') in its provision of law enforcement services through the Windsor Police Department."

CNN reached out to the Windsor Police Department and town officials but did not hear back.

The suit says the Windsor Police Department "lacks adequate policies to ensure that it is using force in a non-discriminatory manner, that it is performing traffic stops in a constitutional, non-pretextual, and bias-free manner, and that members of the public are able to submit and have their complaints heard in a transparent way that upholds the principles of due process."

The attorney general's investigation found that Black drivers made up around 42% of the department's traffic stops from July 2020 through September 2021, the statement said. Black people were stopped 200% to 500% more often than would be expected based on the town's population.

The officers who pulled over Nazario said they thought he was missing a license plate on his SUV.

Town Manager William Saunders confirmed to CNN in April that one officer had been fired and the other remained on the job.

Nazario filed a lawsuit in April in federal court for $1 million in compensatory damages, claiming the officers violated his rights under the First and Fourth Amendments.

The officers have denied the claims and the case is ongoing.

 

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2021: A Year That Can Eat My Whole Ass
ShowerCap

As you’re putting the finishing touches on your New Year’s plans, don’t forget: it’s not enough to merely drive a stake through 2021’s heart; you need to cut the bastard’s head off, burn everything, and scatter the ashes separately, or you’re gonna wind up with sequels, and all these characters’ll keep coming back forever. I mean, didn’t Rush Limbaugh just teach us a valuable lesson about addition by subtraction?..........
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Well, the world’s naughty won a surprise last-minute reprieve from Santa’s judgment, since, thanks to the Omicron variant, everybody’s stockings were so full of ****ing Covid, there wasn’t any room for coal.

Yeah, everybody look under your chair…surprise, it’s Omicron! Say “Omicron” three times in the bathroom mirror, and it will appear. (It will also appear if you do not say “Omicron” three times in the bathroom mirror.) This shit is twice as catchy as that Blue (Da Ba Dee) song, and nearly as lethal.

Little ****er is ****ing EVERYWHERE. The “good” news is, for the vaxxed, and especially the boosted, odds of survival seem t’be reasonably decent, though of course, our distinguished colleagues in the death cult across the aisle appear determined to greet this new variant with their customary Russian roulette volley.

I’ve never seen a group of people so libidinous for intubation and an early grave. And this persistent undercurrent of suicidal petulance in right-wing culture doesn’t even feel newsworthy anymore; that dull, wet thudding of ten million morons rhythmically striking their own foreheads with hammers has long since faded into the background, but it’s still pretty ****ed up, y’know?

It’s almost impressive, how thoroughly these little jerks have broken their own brains. Like, there was this conference, for the kookiest kult kids; Flynn, Lindell, Eric Trump…a veritable carnival for the cray-cray. And a bunch of the attendees caught Covid, because OF COURSE THEY DID, ****ing mid-Omicron anti-vax clambake? That’s basically the free square in the middle of the bingo card, right?

But no, these braying ****wits actually had the gall to claim somebody released ****ing anthrax into their little loser treehouse, because the forces of liberalism would only naturally deem it necessary to deploy biological weaponry against a handful of dumbasses who were already inviting Covid over to play street hockey in their ****ing lungs.

I look at that shit in awe. What magnificent wrecks y’all have made of your minds.

This vaccine thing…it’s weird, isn’t it? It’s so important to them. It’s the nougaty center of all MAGA doctrine, the one and only commandment carved into the stone tablet: VACCINE BAD.

When of course, here in the real world, the vaccine is…I mean, pretty good, I think. You could even call it a towering act of human achievement, a functionally miraculous giver of life, if you were inclined. Keeping millions and millions of people alive while this virus works so diligently to kill us? I have to admit, I’m a fan.

But even with ICUs predictably refilling with a fresh wave of unvaccinated culture war casualties, Cult45’s faith in this one, debunked-daily-for-months tenet remains unshaken, and unshakable.

Turns out the horde hates the (life-saving) Covid vaccines more than they love Donald Trump, oh ho. The Frankenstein bit isn’t nearly as much fun on the other side of the rampage, is it, shithead?

Yeah, I guess coming between a death cult and its chosen vehicle for a glorious end carries certain dangers. Candace Owens, Alex Jones, even ol’ Ben Garrison snapped, savagely and without hesitation, at the curiously-undersized hand that fed them for so long.

Golly, who’da guessed the fattest leeches had the sharpest teeth?.......
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Where they’re able, Republicans are actually EXTENDING UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS to cover those who lose their jobs for refusing to comply with vaccine mandates, that’s how far through the dang looking glass we are with this garbage. Guess you can’t be a filthy taker if you’re busy with the important, almost holy work of…spreading disease.

But yeah, you’re losing the loons, Donnie. They’ve found someone younger and hotter, and now they’re the ones snickering at all the shit they snuck into the prenup. What shenanigans will ensue as this millions-strong rage mob spirals beyond even its primary creator’s control? Tune in next year; it’s not like canceling the show is an option.........
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One thing’s for sure: Charlie “Yes I Am Aware I Resemble a Dick Tracy Villain My Mother Pointed That Out With Great Frequency” Kirk’s TPUSA rally clearly had no intention of getting out-Nuremberged by any competing Brownshirt orgs. From the genuinely freaky worship of child soldier Kyle Rittenhouse to Jesse Watters’ insidious MURDER FAUCI HAW HAW HAW act, inciting and glorifying violence is the hip new trend sweeping through conservative circles almost as swiftly as…no, I can’t say it, it’s too easy.

And all that insanity trickles downward and outward, as it’s intended to. The hate, the lies, and yeah, the normalization of violence as an acceptable political tactic. On one level, that leads, as Reuters documents, to hundreds of death threats targeting election officials; but then there’s the steady supply of more deeply radicalized weirdos, randomly snapping and committing mass murder every so often…just a system working the way it was designed...........
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Well, it took all of eight months for projectile evangelical Madison Cawthorn to tell God to shove those “sacred marriage vows” straight up his infallible pooper. Also, the lady involved low-key might be a Russian intelligence operative? You have to admit, young Maddy is precisely the sort of useful idiot that’d dive face-first into a honeypot…anyway I’m sure there are loads of other reasons he popped by Fux Nooz to casually chat about how much better Russia’s military is than dumb ol’ America’s. Just loads........
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Fitting, that the holiday season should bear witness to the birth of a brand new MAGA messiah! No, I don’t mean JFK Jr., I’m talking about the Let’s Go Brandon Guy, who probably possesses a real name of some sort, but honestly, who gives a ****. As I understand it, this random wanker attained instant wingnut celebrity by throwing a sad, sorry fit at President Biden during a frickin’ NORAD Santa Tracker event, i.e. in front of a bunch of small children, COOL LIFE, BRO.

(I’m sure it comes as no surprise to learn LGB Guy suddenly sees a leader of men staring back at him from the mirror, on accounta how many likes his wee tantrum got on the information superhighway. I’d like to think you couldn’t get elected solely on Nearly Said **** to the President, Sort Of But Not Really, but on the other hand, maybe Ronny Jackson wouldn’t get into so much trouble if he had a buddy.).......
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I see fashy flunky Peter Navarro is out touring his avant-garde one-man performance art piece, where he goes on television to repeatedly confess his central role in a seditious criminal conspiracy, daring Liz Cheney to drag him by the ear to federal prison. Pete even gave the idiot coup a VERY grown-up codename: the “Green Bay Sweep,” oooooooooo how fancy n’ impressive! I’m told Navarro issued instructions throughout his attempted overthrow of the United States government using the super-awesome Ninja Turtle walkie-talkies his mom got him two Xmases ago.......
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So, Ron DeSantis has gone missing, apparently? And his team has been awkwardly faking public appearances on social media? Where o where could the GOVERNOR OF FLORIDA be, as Omicron tears through the all-the-kids-n-old-folks-you-can-eat buffet he’s made of his state? Hiking the Appalachian Trail? Caught up in a mad, mid-life attempt to break the Donkey Kong high score record? Inquiring minds wanna know..........
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Well, in a world that could use about a million more Harry Reids, we lost the original. Shit. That was one well-lived life. Thinking about it now, “Be more like Harry Reid” strikes me as about as much as I could hope for, resolution-wise. Yeah, let’s do that.
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Good lord. Well, I do believe we’ve all eaten enough shit for one trip around the sun. Enjoy your celebrations and reflections, friends, but save a bottle of somethin’ special for the big anniversary coming up next week.

 

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End Book 17