I protect the galaxy from the threat of invasion from the Evil Emperor Zurg sworn enemy of the Galactic Alliance!

I feel safer in this pandemic and economic meltdown now that Mike Pence has announced the name we must use when addressing members of the Space Force.

This is just such silly-bonkers. There is no space force, except as a line item on a budget that will be funneled off to defense contractors. They’re not guarding us against anything. I hope the Democrats just erase this nonsense off the spreadsheet as soon as they take office (they probably won’t, they love defense contractors, too.)

I do have to wonder what that streak of light on Earth in the bottom left of their logo is. Is that the Guardians launching missiles from Earth at some target in space, or the Guardians bombing some target from orbit?

How much do I despise this man?

The leader of the obstructionist party, the science-denying party, the “let them get COVID & die” party, the party that undermines every attempt to control the pandemic, has rushed to the front of the line to get vaccinated. Him and Rupert Murdoch, even as his networks preach conspiracy theories and denialism.

Every EMT and nurse and doctor who has been risking all to be in the front line of helping people against this disease, and every public school teacher who has been told by their government to get in there and teach potential disease carriers, ought to be infuriated.

Oh, I forgot…the chickenshit party, the draft-dodging coward party, the party of flag-wavers who shoo the cannon-fodder forward.

Also, he’s not working to get relief to the people. His is the party that’s going to whine about the deficit and how they can’t possibly help with college debt relief, or send out emergency aid checks, or make health care available for all, while shoveling cash into the pockets of bankers and lawyers as fast as they can.

In case you were wondering, no, I haven’t been vaccinated, and there isn’t even a whisper on the university email lists about it, yet I’m going back into the student labs in about a month. We did get a video thank you card instead of a bonus, or a raise (no, that’s not happening, the Republicans in the state legislature will make sure of that), or a vaccination.

Yay.

The Republicans want to kill us

I could not believe the headlines on the Minneapolis Star Tribune yesterday. One was that several bars in the city were opening in defiance of the state restrictions on dine-in service, which is just incredibly stupid. Another was that Governor Walz was easing some of the current restrictions, which is just incredibly chickenshit.

I presume all the renewed stupidity/chickenshittery is a consequence of two things: the appearance of vaccines, and the fact that our state statistics had a recent decline in incidence. However, we don’t have the vaccine yet — at least, I don’t have the opportunity to get it yet — and even when it is available, it’s going to require one shot, followed by a 3 week wait before you get a second shot, and then you have to wait a couple more weeks before it is effective. So even if the vaccine was in our hot little hands right now, you’d still be expected to avoid hanging out in bars for 5 or 6 weeks longer.

As for the recent improvement in our numbers, that’s because the lockdown was working. Why do you want to abandon a strategy that is having a positive effect?

Yes, the numbers are going to go back up, inevitably, because people are getting lazy and selfish. So what has the governor done?

“You brought the curve down. You made the sacrifices necessary,” Walz said.

Due to the drop in case counts, Walz said, the state will now permit outdoor social gatherings with a maximum of 15 people between three households and indoor gatherings with a maximum of 10 people between two households. Gyms and fitness centers will be permitted to open at 25% capacity, and youth and adult sports will resume on January 4. Elementary schools will be permitted to reopen on January 18.

Walz did not loosen the ban on indoor dining, one of the more controversial provisions of the four week pause, but did allow outdoor dining to resume at 50% capacity. Bars, restaurants and breweries will continue to be closed for indoor dining through January 11.

Jesus, WHY? You brought the curve down by making sacrifices, so now we’re going to do the experiment of bringing the curve up by making fewer sacrifices? Why, why, why? This makes no sense.

Part of the answer is that the Republicans in the state legislature applied pressure and made threats.

We’re also getting pointed to by the right-wing press. Laura Ingraham, for instance, singled out the upper Midwest showing signs of a modest recovery to tell her viewers that the doctors know nothing, go out and celebrate Xmas with your families, there’s nothing you can do, the virus has a “natural cycle”. This is a case where if we do something that works, the idiot media will tell us all to stop doing the thing that works.

She has Scott Atlas on, the incompetent doctor who was a puppet for the incompetent Trump administration, who thought the best policy was “herd immunity”. They totally politicized Health & Human Services to pursue this strategy.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has sought to distance itself from one of the agency’s former advisors—personally installed by President Trump—who the results of a watchdog investigation published Wednesday show repeatedly advocated for allowing millions of young and middle-aged Americans to become infected with Covid-19 over the summer in a push for the HHS to pursue a controversial “herd immunity” strategy.

The infuriating thing is that these hacks don’t even understand the concept of “herd immunity” — they used the phrase as an excuse to justify doing nothing. You don’t get herd immunity by letting an active virus run rampant; the point of herd immunity is to use a vaccine to prevent a virus from getting a toe-hold in the community in the first place. Do they think we had herd immunity against smallpox because it spread unchecked, killing people and disfiguring others, because the survivors had immunity? That’s like using the principle of firebreaks to advocate for controlling wildfires by burning down the whole damn forest ahead of time.

The good news, at least: the Minnesota attorney general is suing those bars that reopened, and has also issued restraining orders to shut them down immediately.

Ethics in Journalism

It’s getting hard to find, and apparently you won’t find it at the NY Post. They ran a sensationalist, titillating story about a NY paramedic who also opened an OnlyFans account to try and make ends meet, sneering at her “racy” content (curiously, also including a few “racy” photos for those who read the NY Post), and ending with a quote from a veteran paramedic who “blasted” her for her choice of a side job, and a quote from the website of her employer that forbids “inappropriate conduct”. The story is clearly trying to stoke Puritanical outrage and get her fired.

Well, Lauren Caitlyn Kwei has fired back at the “journalist”.

Lauren Caitlyn Kwei
December 14 at 7:35 PM ·
Over the past 3 days, my life and the intimate details of it have been made public for millions of strangers to read and judge. There are many people telling me what they think I should do and giving me advice I did not ask for. Let me be very clear: I did not want the NY Post to run this article, much less use my name. When Dean Balsamini first “interviewed” me, he did not tell me what this was about until after I disclosed most of my background. He did not include in his article that I started crying on the phone when he finally did tell me what he was inquiring about. He did not include that he played this “friendly guy” reporter who just wanted to get MY side of the story, since ya know, they were gonna run it anyway, with or without my input. I know my actions have consequences and I know some of you think I was naive. I truly believe whoever “tipped” the post does not know me personally because anyone who knows me knows the kind of person I am. Let me tell you who I am. This is me.
I’m twenty-three years old and from a small town in West Virginia. My mother’s family is from northern West Virginia and my father’s parents were immigrants from China. I am the eldest of 4 children and our family was one of the only mixed race families in my predominately white town. I graduated from Winfield High School in a class of 200, the largest at the time. During high school, I was active in show choir, GSA, NHS, and dance classes. I moved to NYC when I was 18 to pursue my lifelong dream of being on broadway. I completed AMDA, started auditioning, and then decided it wasn’t for me anymore. So I became an EMT. I worked as an EMT for a year then I quit because I couldn’t put myself through paramedic school on minimum wage. I went back to hosting at a restaurant to make ends meet while I worked a year through paramedic school, which was one of the most challenging things I have ever done. I graduated paramedic school in February of 2020 and have been working ever since. I struggled a lot during the height of the pandemic. I was suicidal a lot of this year. I had panic attacks at work and even had a supervisor tell me I should consider another profession if I didn’t grow a thicker skin. I am a damn good paramedic. I LOVE my job and I love taking care of people. I don’t want to quit my day job and get my bag on OnlyFans — I want to serve the city of New York. That’s all I have ever wanted to do. I have always believed in using my voice to speak for those who many not be heard I was raised to ALWAYS show kindness and compassion. The NY Post gave me a voice. So here I am, showing myself to the world. I’m here to tell you all that my First Responder brothers and sisters are suffering. We need your help. We have been exhausted for months, reusing months old PPE, being refused hazard pay, and watching our fellow healthcare workers die in front of our eyes, in our ambulances. At least three NYC EMS workers died by suicide this year and there has been very little action about the lack of mental health care accessibility for first responders. EMS are the lowest paid first responders in NYC which leads to 50+ hour weeks and sometimes three jobs. My brothers and sisters DESERVE CHANGE! Visit emspac.org for a Mission Statement and to see how you can help. How’s that for a story, NY Post?!
Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart for your donations, support, and love. I am so thankful and plan on using this platform to voice the needs of my NYC EMS family. This is just the beginning, folks.
Lauren Caitlyn Kwei

The real story is that young people all across the country are struggling to make a living and are particularly hard hit by this pandemic, even as the rich prosper even more. It is especially tragic that health care workers are made to suffer most even as we need them most. You don’t get to decry individuals making choices about how to earn an income while simultaneously supporting a system that demeans and diminishes their choices, while also setting irrational priorities that harm society. Who hurts us most, a woman taking her clothes off on camera or a billionaire sucking out all the wealth of a nation?

Oh, and fuck the NY Post.

The romance is over

The heartbreak of a breakup is worse when you get the news secondhand. Putin has parted ways with Trump.

More than a month later than most world leaders, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday congratulated President-elect Joe Biden for his victory in the election, a delayed recognition that could set the tone for icy relations.

“In his message Vladimir Putin wished the president-elect every success and expressed confidence that Russia and the United States, which bear special responsibility for global security and stability, can, despite their differences, effectively contribute to solving many problems and meeting challenges that the world is facing today,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

I knew all along that the relationship would never work out — it was a friendship of convenience between two spoiled, selfish people who would only stick together while they thought they could get something from one another. Oh well, Donald still has a few potential dates for the prom on Saturday.

Putin was one of the last heads of state to acknowledge Biden’s win; Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and North Korea’s Kim Jung Un are other holdouts.

I can see where Bolsonaro and Kim have a lot in common with the loser-in-chief, but I was baffled by Obrador. Shouldn’t Mexico be happy to see a bigoted basher out of office? But here’s a brief explanation:

Few expected López Obrador, elected in July 2018, to openly embrace Trump and his hard-line border policies after all the dirt thrown. But that’s just what happened.

At heart, the two men are nationalists more concerned with domestic business than foreign affairs, experts say.

“I think we need to understand that AMLO has an uncommon worldview,” said Duncan Wood, director of the nonpartisan Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute in Washington, D.C. “He is much more focused on what happens internally than what happens in the United States. He wants the world to know he isn’t beholden to the United States.”

OK, I can respect that — it’s not so much an affection for Trump as it is a need to stand independent of the US, no matter who holds the office.

No rest for the weary

Time to crash down into reality. Meet Bob Good, the newly elected congressvermin from Virginia.

You think electing Biden made everything all better? Think again.

  • Virginia just elected a Trumpkin. He’s going to be poisoning congress for the next few years.
  • He’s addressing a rally of unmasked people, not wearing a mask.
  • His message is that we have a very serious virus, but the pandemic is fake.

Huh. The US didn’t suddenly become smarter on 4 November. I guess the work has only just begun.