If I can post a comic comparing us to a Monty Python skit, surely we can be compared to a fictional parallel earth where they actually try to do the right thing.
Although I will point out that Biden Prime did come through with free Covid test kits. Order yours now at https://www.covidtests.gov/
How many people recognized the source of this joke? With an updated caption to make it about the pandemic.
I mean, what’s the point of a pandemic if you can’t make lots of money from it?
At the end of last year, Los Angeles County released the following data:
And this doesn’t even take into account whether or not people wear masks.
This may not be humorous, but how ironic is someone doing an interpretive dance about their own PhD research on the proteins in SARS-CoV-2. This will make all you science nerds dance with joy!
This would be even more hilarious if it weren’t so true!
I’ve been waiting for something that makes me laugh out loud to post. And SNL provides the goods.
Mark Twain once proposed that human kings and queens should be replaced with feline monarchs. Cats are easy to worship and obey, but they don’t cause major problems like most human sovereigns.
Ironically, a couple of weeks ago, Jordan Klepper from The Daily Show went to a Donald Trump rally in Iowa. He interviewed quite a few of the attendees, and they seem to buy into a similar kind of leader. They believe that Trump is actually our president, but that he is singularly not responsible for anything bad that has happened to us. For example, the withdrawal from Afghanistan isn’t his fault, even though they believe that Trump is actually in power. Even worse, Trump was responsible for agreeing to remove all US troops from there, even though he didn’t actually do anything about it.
Who knows, maybe Trump is a cat. After all, he is orange!
This map has been making the rounds, showing the highest paid public employee in each state. And in 80% of the states, that employee, who is often pulling down multiple million dollars a year, is a football or basketball coach at a public university.
Now here’s the kicker. Just who is paying for the salaries of these coaches? If you’re reading this, it is probably you. It sure as heck isn’t the ultra-wealthy in this country.
Pro-Publica has obtained a trove of IRS data about the taxes paid by the richest people, who are able to severely reduce the taxes they pay using tax dodges that are available to virtually all of us. For example, the 25 most affluent paid an average 3.4% of their income in taxes. In many years, they paid nothing at all. How much did you pay?
Here’s a table showing the numbers for four of the most moneyed people:
Ironically, Warren Buffet’s true tax rate is only 0.1% of his income, even though he is a proponent of raising taxes on the rich. Compare that to what middle-class wage earners pay:
It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.
With a bang and a whimper. I just can’t get enough of this little animation. It concisely wraps up all my fears for this country.
Axios says about the 2024 Republican nomination:
Almost every top Republican we talk to said it would take a severe illness, death — or criminal charges sticking — to stop Trump from walking away with the race before it even begins.
A few days after the presidential election when Joe Biden was declared the winner, the Lt. Gov. of Texas, Republican Dan Patrick, offered a bounty of up to $1 million to anyone who could supply proof of voter fraud, and a minimum of $25,000 to anyone who provided information that led to a conviction.
This offer wasn’t limited to Texas, it was for anywhere in the country. Patrick specifically called out the large (and heavily Democratic) cities of Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, and Atlanta. After all, if your goal is to overturn the election to install Donald Trump as the rightful president, you have to find a lot of Democratic votes to invalidate.
Well, it has been just under a year, but Patrick finally made his first payout, cutting a check for the minimum $25,000. As reported by the Dallas Morning News (paywall):
Nearly a year after offering up a hefty bounty for evidence of voter fraud in the wake of Donald Trump’s loss, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has handed out his first reward. But instead of going to an informant who smoked out fraud by Democrats, Patrick’s five-figure payout went to a progressive poll worker in Pennsylvania whose tip led to a single conviction of illegal voting by a registered Republican.
So there was voter fraud, but it was committed by a Republican who tried to cast an extra vote in his son’s name. And there is more fraud. Just in Pennsylvania alone, there are two other cases where Republicans tried to vote for their dead mothers. In Ohio, a local Republican official forged his dead father’s signature on an absentee ballot, and then voted again himself.
What is even worse, is that most of these people got what amounts to a slap on the wrist for their intentional voter fraud. The Republican in Pennsylvania who tried to vote for his son was put on probation. The Republican in Ohio was sentenced to three days in jail and a $500 fine.
Compare this to Crystal Mason, a black woman in Texas who was out on supervised release due to a federal conviction for tax fraud (for which she had already spent almost three years in jail). Mason cast a provisional ballot in the 2016 presidential election. She didn’t know she wasn’t allowed to vote, and her vote was never counted. But the mother of three was sentenced to five years in prison for illegal voting.
And as a side note, I’m wondering if Donald Trump will spend any time in jail for all of his tax fraud.
Lobbyist Grover Norquist famously said that he wanted to “Starve the Beast” to reduce the size of government “down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”
There’s just one problem. Not everything can be done by private enterprise. Don’t get me wrong, I am a strong believer in capitalism and private enterprise. But common sense makes it obvious that capitalism requires a profit, and not everything worth doing generates profit. Would you want the military to be run as a profit-making enterprise? Or streets and roads in your town? Or the local police or fire departments? Or keeping your food, water, and air safe and clean?
Climate change is exactly one of those externalities that requires government intervention.
The Atlantic has an interesting article about the fact that the US — despite being the world leader in developing and manufacturing Covid vaccines — is falling way behind in actually getting our citizens vaccinated.
The U.S. is no longer in the top five in national vaccine rates. We’re not in the top 10, or the top 20, or top 30. By one count, we’re 36th—countries as varied as Malta, Canada, Mongolia, and Ecuador have all surpassed us. If the European Union or the G7 were countries, they would be ahead of us too. With about 66 percent of Americans over 18 fully vaccinated, some might be impressed that it’s possible to get two-thirds of the country to agree on anything. But America still seems to suffer from an internationally unique reluctance.
Why did we fall behind?
The data point to three key reasons the United States is 36th and falling: It is unusually uninsured, unusually contrarian, and unusually polarized. These are three familiar—even defining—attributes of American life.
Not just attributes of American life, but now of American death.
Wouldn’t it be ironic if the only way for Americans to avoid catching Covid is to move out of America? The NY Times has a tracker for which countries are the most vaccinated against Covid. The top 3 countries, all three with 84% fully vaccinated, are Portugal, U.A.E., and Malta. Coincidentally (?) all three of these have large and thriving expat populations.
A subreddit — r/HermanCainAward — chronicles people who were against vaccinations and masks, but succumbed to the coronavirus. Slate has posted an article about the subreddit, which is also a must-read.
I’ve noticed that people I talk to are becoming more and more angry over those who refuse to get vaccinated. One big fear is that by prolonging the pandemic, we are flirting with having a new variant evolve that will resist vaccination, and thus put everyone at risk, with horrific consequences.
We know how to get rid of Covid-19. We just aren’t willing to do it. What the fuck is wrong with us?
Stephen Colbert gives you the big news about Nicky Minaj’s Cousin’s Friend’s Testicles:
But wait, there’s more!
Joe Biden recently encouraged private companies, government agencies, and other organizations to implement vaccine mandates. But some of these mandates include a religious exemption. Unfortunately for nut-jobs looking for a way to escape getting vaccinated, all major religions support vaccination, so a number of fly-by-night religions have sprung up just to fleece support anti-vaxxers.
Which raises the question of just what is a religion, which brings up the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Naturally, the Church isn’t against vaccination, they are against people who don’t get vaccinated.
Many people have asked what is the Church’s stance on vaccinations and vaccination mandates.
Many have asked if we provide exemption letters.
I find it weird that religious exemptions are an accepted thing in general, seems like it would be best to leave public health policy to the most knowledgeable, not religious leadership. But if Churches must take a position on the issue …
I am happy to announce that we are offering Official letters for those Pastafarians who would like to be exempt from working in proximity to the unvaxxed.
The unvaccinated may emit harmful virus particles which are forbidden to devout Pastafarians, therefore we expect all reasonable measures to be taken to help us avoid these virus particles. Please respect our religious liberty.
Here’s the letter they will give you. You can get your own through a handy form.
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