I could have told you months ago that this was going to happen. Thanks to the right-wing propaganda networks and the gullibility of the American citizen, the pandemic is coming back.

Federal health officials sounded an alarm Friday about a surge in U.S. coronavirus infections fueled by the twin threats posed by the highly transmissible delta variant and a stagnation in efforts to vaccinate as many Americans as possible.

During a White House briefing, Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said the seven-day average of coronavirus infections soared nearly 70 percent in just one week, to about 26,300 cases a day. The seven-day average for hospitalizations has increased, too, climbing about 36 percent from the previous seven-day period, she said.

“There is a clear message that is coming through: This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Walensky said. “We are seeing outbreaks of cases in parts of the country that have low vaccination coverage because unvaccinated people are at risk, and communities that are fully vaccinated are generally faring well.”

Imagine your community is threatened by a brush fire. Everyone rushes to put it out; they spend a whole bunch of money on fire-fighting equipment. They get it mostly extinguished, there are just some smoldering coals left on the ground, and at that point we all say, “That’s taken care of, everyone go home, take it easy.” The next day, the neighborhood is burning again. Carl’s house burns down. We’re all sorry about Carl, but the fire is out, mostly, a few embers still smoking over by the gas station, but hey, this new fire extinguisher we bought is too heavy to haul over there to put it out completely, let’s just give up.

Maybe it’ll go out on its own. There couldn’t possibly be an explosion of flames that destroys the whole town. We’ll deal with it then, if we absolutely must.

When will we realize that it’s going to take a consistent, sustained effort to tamp this problem down? Nah, it’s too hard, probably never.

---

Oh,look. Florida leads the way.

About two weeks after Florida health officials discontinued publicly reporting some data and stopped issuing their daily COVID-19 summaries detailing cases, test positivity and vaccinations, some researchers remain concerned that the moves were made too early.

Even as the pandemic wanes, scientists such as Jennifer Nuzzo, a leading epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, say that state health departments should be presenting more data, not less, while the medical and science communities continue to gauge the effectiveness of a still-fresh vaccination campaign.

“It feels like we’re running a marathon and we’re almost giving up a couple miles from the finish line,” Nuzzo said in an interview with the Miami Herald.

Did you know 20% of the new cases in the US are in Florida?

There are a thousand stories in that mob of insufferable insurrectionists who stormed the capitol on 6 January. This is one of them.

The picture ought to be enough, but I’ll fill in a few details. That’s a guy dressed up as Captain Moroni, a figure from the Book of Mormon. His flag reads, IN MEMORY OF OUR GOD, OUR RELIGION, AND FREEDOM, AND OUR PEACE, OUR WIVES, AND OUR CHILDREN. ALMA 46:12. The FBI had absolutely no problem tracking this absurd wanker down, and he has been arrested. His real name is Nathan Wayne Entrekin. He bragged about showing up in costume, and despite the flag blustering about his wives, he also recorded video on his phone addressing his mother.

I made it Mom. I made it to the top. Mom, look, I made it to the top, to the top here. Look at all the patriots here. Haha, if I can make it up that, anybody can. [laughs] Oh man. Look at all the patriots here. Patriots, patriots, patriots. Look at all the people, Mom. Look at all that down there. And the monuments over there, way over there. I gotta catch my breath here. Sorry. Haha.

[yelling to an unseen protester] Captain Moroni! Same fight, same place, different time. 76 B.C.!

I’m here for Trump. Four more years, Donald Trump! Our rightful president! I made it to the relative top, anyway. Oh my gosh, how many of us are here? Must be like, millions. Couple million, maybe. I keep running into trees, though. I gotta get this first, though, before my costume falls off me. Check this out, Mom. All those people.

Being raised in religion doesn’t help one distinguish fact from fiction, does it? The Book of Mormon was a fantasy story scribbled up by a 19th century con artist, and Captain Moroni has about as much basis in reality as Captain America or Captain Marvel or Captain Planet or Captain Caveman or Captain Underpants.

Of course, he also parrots the racist bullshit the Mormons have always believed.

I am Captain Moroni. I am the William Wallace of the Book of Mormon. In the Book of Alma of the Book of Mormon, a freedom fighter named Captain Moroni fought for his freedom against the King-Men. He was a Freeman, part of the Freemen movement. And around, I like to say 76 B.C. because 1776 sounds so—is so popular—but before Christ came to Jerusalem, in this land, the Book of Mormon is about this land, right? The same fight for freedom, this land, the same land, right here, upon which we stand, the native American Indians they have Jewish DNA, descent. I can tell you about, you can Google that, the Algonquin Indians have Native American, have, uh, Jewish descent in their DNA, there’s evidence of the Book of Mormon. I don’t want to get too much into that. I’m here for freedom. You’re here for freedom. Captain Moroni ripped his coat and he wrote this message right here. And if I can get it open, it says …

The rioters weren’t sending their best. But then, we knew that all along.

The Circle of Nations Indigenous Association put out a call to search our campus for graves a month ago.

June 14. 2021

CW: Indian Boarding Schools, Historical Trauma, Cultural Genocide.

Circle of Nations Indigenous Association calls upon UMN Morris to make immediate plans to search for unmarked gravesites of children buried on/near our present-day campus.

How many colleges in America have 2-7 murdered children buried underneath their campuses? How many colleges have gone decades without intending to search for these remains and return them to their families? These circumstances are unacceptable.

Since 2019, UMN Morris has committed to a policy of truth telling, understanding, and healing in regards to our campus’s history. We believe honoring this commitment is impossible without searching for these children and returning them to their homes, so that their spirits and their kinships may heal as well.

We are thankful for the University’s decision to cooperate with the Department of Interior’s review of federal Indian boarding schools. However, it would be more appropriate if the university led the search itself, with constant, close collaboration from tribal nations and our Indigenous campus community, rather than the United States federal government.

Search the School.
Circle of Nations Indigenous Association

Our student leaders seconded that suggestion.

There is a petition.

The University of Minnesota-Morris has a moral obligation to make immediate plans to search the school for the unmarked burial sites of the 2-7 Indian boarding school victims. These children must then be returned to their home communities so their spirits and families can heal.

This is an essential action step towards fulfilling UMN Morris’s policy of truth telling, understanding, and healing in regards to our institution’s history as a former Indian boarding school.

In June 2021, outgoing Chancellor Michelle Behr announced the University’s willingness to cooperate with the Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative.

However, we prefer that the search be conducted by an Indigenous ground-penetrating radar specialist, in constant collaboration with tribal nations and our Indigenous campus community, rather than the federal government – an institution responsible for destructive policies towards Native American people, including Indian boarding schools.

I assume that number of 2-7 comes from some historical evidence. I hope it isn’t more. If there are unmarked graves on or near campus, I agree that we have an obligation to find them.

Another election fraud case by Sydney Powell and Lin Wood is going down in flames as a Michigan judge finds their affidavits of voting shenanigans in Detroit were not responsibly vetted. “There’s a duty that counsel has that when you’re submitting a sworn statement … that you have reviewed it, that you had done some minimal due diligence,” she said. They had not.

Going through the list of rejected claims, one jumped out at me.

One declaration came from a witness referred to by the lawyers in court documents only as “Spider.” In his sworn declaration, he claimed to be a former military intelligence expert who had discovered server traffic revealing that Iran and China had tampered with the election. But The Washington Post revealed in December that “Spider” was actually a 43-year-old Texas-based information technology consultant named Joshua Merritt who never worked in military intelligence.

Records show he enrolled in a training program with a military intelligence battalion but never completed the entry-level course, an Army spokeswoman told The Post. Records show that Merritt spent most of his decade in the U.S. Army as a wheeled-vehicle mechanic.

How dare he steal the honorable name of “Spider”! Can he be arrested for that?

I suspect that the more serious accusation is that he lied about his credentials and expertise. Being a “wheeled-vehicle mechanic” is an honorable job that does require considerable skill and knowledge — my father was a mechanic, too — but it probably doesn’t prepare you in military intelligence or cybersecurity, and doesn’t involve any training in cracking the information communications going on in Iran and China.

This kind of thing is all Powell and Wood have — people swearing that they saw a mysterious bag that could have held ballots, that sort of thing, and the lawyers didn’t carry out even a superficial scrutiny of the claims.

If Parker decides to discipline the lawyers, she could require them to pay the fees of their opponents in the case, the city of Detroit and Michigan state officials. But she could also go further — assessing additional monetary penalties or recommending grievance proceedings be opened that could result in banning the attorneys from practicing in Michigan or disbarring them altogether.

Yes, please.

---

By the way, you may have heard that one of the lawyers was weeping, and later resigned from the Wood/Powell team. This wasn’t because she was humiliated in court. She later said she wasn’t crying, she was just furious because no one was defending her hero Donald Trump as he deserved.

Yeah, he is really arguing for complete surveillance of every teacher in America to catch them if they dare to teach seditious ideas, like Critical Race Theory, because he thinks that’s what grade school teachers are actually doing. It’s nonsense. You know I’m a big fat flamingly liberal college teacher, and I don’t teach CRT because it’s way out of my discipline and an inappropriate topic for a class on genetics or cell biology, right? So why does he fear a second grade teacher who’s teaching about the times table would sneak in a lesson on racial oppression?

But this teacher lists many good points. Bring it on! For the past year and a half we’ve all been teaching under the lenses of cameras (often purchased with our own money) as we struggle to teach in spite of the pandemic, so this is nothing new. Even before the pandemic, my classes have been pretty much open — I get requests for potential student recruits to sit in, and I always say yes, and I’ve had students bring a friend into the class, and it’s not as if I’d yell “get out!” because they haven’t paid tuition, and there are always a couple of students in the front row with recorders going through the whole lecture. Does Carlson think we’re afraid of people hearing what we teach?

And who is going to review all these classes?

To be honest, I’m fascinated by the logistics of your proposal. In a world where school districts are struggling to recruit and maintain teachers, who is going to man your “citizen review boards” (setting aside the fact that public school teachers already answer to publicly elected school boards)? For instance, in my school district I sense you would need well over 500 cameras going every day. Who watches those 500 screens 10 hours a day (I want you watching my 7 am jazz band and my after school lessons)? What qualifications would these “experts” need to know what they were watching for? What happens when they catch a teacher teaching…let me get this right…”civilization ending poison?” Who do they report that to? I’m also curious who will pay for all of this incredible technology. Maybe I missed it, but can you point me to a K-12 institution where Critical Race Theory is being taught? Hell, can you define Critical Race Theory for all of us? I’m sure you’ve got answers to all of these questions.

If you think spending that much money and time on surveillance is worthwhile, though, maybe you can kick in a few bucks to help those teachers get school supplies. Or give them raises. That would be nice.

For now, though, we can just have fun with the dumbass punching bag who says stupid shit for his stupid audience on television.

Frankly, I’ve never been able to figure out, instead of dreaming up Orwellian plans to have Big Brother in all of our classrooms, why you don’t round up an army of bright young conservatives to actually step up and teach? Is it because teachers work hard, aren’t paid as much as those with similar educational backgrounds, don’t have support from our elected officials, constantly serve as punching bags for those who don’t understand public education, or is it just because it’s easier to throw rocks at a house than to build one?

Here’s the real deal Tuck, I grew up with my mom making me eat your family’s Salisbury Steaks once every couple of weeks (his family makes Swanson TV dinners) for many years. I struggle to take advice on teaching and learning from a guy who makes a steak that, on its best day, tastes like shoe leather that has been left out in a goat pasture for a few weeks. I get that Critical Race Theory is your latest attempt to scare your elderly demographic, but let’s just admit that you don’t know what you’re talking about.

With all of that being said, count me on the cameras Tucky. Like many teachers, I’m in the early stages of understanding Critical Race Theory (most of us hadn’t heard about it until you and your people started crying about it), but if you find me teaching it, have one of the Tucker Youth watching your surveillance devices let me know. If Critical Race Theory involves talking honestly about American history, I’m probably doing that sometimes. I spent much of the last six years advocating for a way for teaching to become more transparent, and in the dumbest way possible, you are joining that crusade. Let’s make this happen TV Dinner Boy.

Man, TV Dinner Boy is an ass.

One of Biden’s declared goals was to see 70% of the population vaccinated by July. He didn’t quite make it. The states that did reach the goal are in green.

Compare that to the electoral map.

Huh. Wonder what that means.

A finer-grained analysis might be interesting. My county went for Trump; it also has a vaccination rate currently around 50%.