Yesterday, I started working on cartoons. I need to make 10 for December, and 9 are in the first 17 days. I got some done, but didn’t finish. (I also needed to make a grocery order for tomorrow – which means tomorrow I’ll be putting away. Sigh.)
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Short Takes
Democratic Underground (Babylon Sister) – A day in the Life of Sue Republican
Quote – She arrives at her childhood home. Her generation was the third to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification. She is happy to see her father, who is now retired. Her father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Sue wouldn’t have to. Click through for full anecdote. This is not new – it was written some years ago as “Joe Republican” and credited to Michael Moore, but it applies to both sexes.
Crooks and Liars – Trump Is Now Placing Own Election Officials Across Country
Quote – Trump allies are also seeking to replace officials across the nation, including volunteer poll watchers, paid precinct judges, elected county clerks and state attorneys general, according to state and local officials, as well as rally speeches, social media posts and campaign appearances by those seeking the positions. Click through for a little more, and through again to the Washington Post for still more. My state has laws designed to protect against nefarious behavior by anyone working the election, paid or voluntary (for example, a Republican poll worker cannot even go to the bathroom without a Republican poll worker going along, and vice versa). I’m sure the drafters of those laws were not contemplating perfidy on a scale like this … but they should help. In states which have them. I am seriously concerned about states which don’t have them.
The 19th – Supreme Court indicates it could eliminate a core element of Roe v. Wade
Quote – The court’s justices were also split on what the implications of such a ruling would mean for other major court-protected rights that are not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, but that are predicated on similar interpretations as Roe v. Wade. Those include the right to LGBTQ+ marriage, for instance, the constitutional protection for sexual intercourse between people of the same sex, or the right to use contraception. Click through for solid reporting. Keep an eye on Justice Sotomayor. She seems to be the one asking the difficult questions. Although Justice Kagan is also not silent.
Glenn Kirschner – More Evidence of Trump’s Election Conspiracy; Meadows Changes his Tune, Cooperates w/House Committee
Ring of Fire – Republicans Think They Can Ride Moral Panic Nonsense To Midterm Success
Thom Hartmann – Exposing The Plan To Tear America Apart (He didn’t mention that this was Russian’s plan in uneterfering tiwh tht 2016 electon – to tear us apart along racial/ethnic lines – because they could. I doubt they cared about the racial/ethnic aspect themselves. They just wanted to tear us apart. And that was an easy way to do it. And it was after it worked that it started to get so much worse internally. Russia no longer has to tear us apart. We are tearing ourselves apart.)
politicsrus – Minimum Wage (Don’t get dustracted by the Rickroll.)
Really American – Sometimes It Is About Race
Bear brothers reunited for Christmas
Beau – Let’s talk about tweets, Russia, and that plan….
Yesterday was Giving Tuesday, and also the last day of November, and had I not already known that, I would have deduced it from my email inbox, which was well over 200 by 3:00 pm, and may even have broken 300 by midnoght. Next Tuesday will be a little heavy too, but not like yesterday. It’s only “Colorado Gives” Day.
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Short Takes
Coooks amd Liars (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) – Editorial Calls For Investigation Of Cruz And Hawley
Quote – Hawley and Cruz were the only two senators to object to certification of Joe Biden’s clear victory in the 2020 election results, citing (with zero evidence) supposed concerns about the election’s integrity. That was the same baseless, toxic nonsense then-President Donald Trump had been spewing since before the election. Such talk whipped up the mob of Trump loyalists to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6. Click through for more. My only criticism of this is that we have really got to stop saying “Trump** loyalists” abd start saying “Trump** cultists.”
New Mexico Poliitical Report – Study: Emergency managers should plan for volcanic eruptions in the southwest
Quote – The type of volcanoes found in the southwest are also different from those of the Pacific Northwest. While scientists monitor Mount Saint Helens and other volcanoes for activity that could signal another eruption, Valentine said the future eruptions in the southwest are unlikely to come from the same spot, or vent, where past eruptions occurred. This makes monitoring for future eruptions a bit more challenging. Click through for more science. Well, this is interesting. Though not – they say – anything to stress about.
The 19th – What you need to know about the Supreme Court case that could overturn Roe v. Wade
Quote – The court has heard cases on specific types of abortion laws, weighing in on whether different types of restrictions and regulations violate that “undue burden” standard. But this case poses a different kind of question. It’s an outright challenge to the core protections established in 1973. In its legal filings, the state of Mississippi has argued that the court should overturn Roe v. Wade entirely and allow states to individually determine whether abortion remains legal or not. Click through for history, details, and probability estimates. I hope I don’t need to tell anyone here that this is not just a women’s issue but affects everyone. Many of us are old enough to remember what it was like before Roe.
Glenn Kirschner – Prosecutors Push Back on Bannon’s Circus; Roger Stone & Alex Jones Prepare to Plead the 5th
The Lincoln Project – Road Map
Ring of Fire – The Republicans’ Next Attempt To Steal An Election Will Be Far More Successful
Every year some corporation or organization comes out with a commercialdesigned to celebrate something progressive, something progressive people care about. This year, it is Post Office Normay. (Tissue alert)
Beau – Let’s talk about the perception of race in the US from outside….
Yesterday, my vision was back to normal when I got up, thankfully. Oh, and happy Hanukkah to all who observe it. It’s very early this year – I have already missed two days, for which I apologize.
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Short Takes
Daily Kos (Kerry Eleveld) – Republicans are desperate to believe 2020 was ‘stolen’ from Trump. Nothing will dissuade them
Quote – But when it came to Republicans, 62% misstated the results of the sham audit[in Arizona], with 32% saying the so-called audit found evidence of fraud and 30% saying it probably found fraud, when in fact the report located no 2020 fraud. So even when a sham process initiated by GOP lawmakers, promoted by Donald Trump, and conducted by pro-Trump sympathizers finds no fraud, a substantial majority of Republicans reject and distort the findings. Click thrugh for more numbers – if you need them.
AP News – Jan. 6 panel sets contempt vote for former DOJ official
Quote – The committee on Monday scheduled a vote to pursue contempt charges against Jeffrey Clark, a former Justice Department lawyer who aligned with President Donald Trump as he tried to overturn his election defeat. If approved by the panel, the recommendation of criminal contempt charges would then go to the full House for a vote and then to the Justice Department. Click through for more. This vote is for Clark, as you see. Meadows’s turn in the barrel will come.
The American media misses the true nature of the GOP threat — but an international outlet nailed it
Quote – While I don’t care about [Candace] Owens, and neither should you, we should care about the use of the right’s rhetoric of slander, of which the word “communist” has long played a part in American history. Liberals and progressives first looked to the government as a force of social reform in the early 20th century. Around that time, the Russian Revolution occurred (1917). Since then, the American right has smeared liberals by associating their policies and objectives with godless communism. Click through for details. As we know, left and right have nothing to do with authoritarianism, or its opposite Sadly, most people don’t know that. I’m sure that’s part of what stood in the way of seeing this.
Yesterday, when I got up, my vision was blurrier than usual. That does happen sometimes, often as an allergic reaction. I am such a delayed reactor that it could possibly be due to road fumes from the day before. It did improve as the day progressed, but not quite back to normal. Hopefully it’ll get back to normal soon, since it does slow me down.
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Short Takes
Mother Jones – Every City Should Encourage This Kind of Solar Development
Quote – Undeveloped land is a rapidly dwindling resource, and what’s left is under pressure to deliver a host of other services we require from the natural world—growing food, sheltering wildlife, storing and purifying water, preventing erosion, and sequestering carbon, among others. And that pressure is rapidly intensifying. By 2050, in one plausible scenario from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), supplying solar power for all our electrical needs could require ground-based solar on 0.5 percent of the total land area of the United States. Click through. I’ll bet we can all think of more than one parking lot which would be dramatically improved by this I know I can!
Daily Kos (PvtJarHead) – Iraq War Veteran Tried To Infiltrate III%ers: Was Asked If He Was Willing To Murder Antifa And BLM!
Quote – Immediately following the election I infiltrated an affiliate of the Three Percenters unlawful extremist militia. They straight up asked me if I was willing to murder people from “antifa” and “BLM” during my intake interview. And I recorded all of it. Click through for more details. You know, I am 76, and I cannot remember a timein my life when I felt afraid of contracting a fatal disease AND afraid of being deliberately murdered just for being who I am. And I still can’t grasp how people of color must have felt all their lives – and how they must feel now much more personally yhan I do. I am very grateful this veteran is still willing to risk everything to save us
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Well. TFG, QAnon, and assorted Nazis just got a lot more to answer for. Not that it hasn’t been staring us in the face, but it’s only now that someone knowledgeable has put it into clear and simple language so we can see it.
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How the pandemic helped spread fentanyl across the US and drive opioid overdose deaths to a grim new high
Emblems of America’s epidemics. David Gannon/AFP via Getty Images
For the past 20 years, I have been engaged in efforts to end the opioid epidemic, as a public health official, researcher and clinician. And for every one of those years I have looked on as the number of deaths from drug overdoses has set a new record high.
Yet even knowing that trend I was surprised by the latest tally from the CDC showing that for the first time ever, the number of Americans who fatally overdosed over the course of a year surpassed 100,000. In a 12-month period ending at the end of April 2021, some 100,306 died in the U.S., up 28.5% over the same period a year earlier.
The soaring death toll has been fueled by a much more dangerous black market opioid supply. Illicitly synthesized fentanyl – a potent and inexpensive opioid that has driven the rise in overdoses since it emerged in 2014 – is increasingly replacing heroin. Fentanyl and fentanyl analogs were responsible for almost two-thirds of the overdose deaths recorded in the 12 months period ending in April 2021.
It is especially tragic that these deaths are mainly occurring in people with a disease – opioid addiction – that is both preventable and treatable. Most heroin users want to avoid fentanyl. But increasingly, the heroin they seek is mixed with fentanyl or what they purchase is just fentanyl without any heroin in the mix.
While the spread of fentanyl is the primary cause of the spike in overdose deaths, the coronavirus pandemic also made the crisis worse.
Before the COVID-19 health crisis, the skyrocketing increase in fentanyl-related overdose deaths in America was mainly affecting the eastern half of the U.S., and hit especially hard in urban areas like Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City. A possible reason behind this was that in the eastern half of the U.S., heroin has mainly been available in powder form rather than the black tar heroin more common in the West. It is easier to mix fentanyl with powdered heroin.
COVID-19 resulted in less cross-national traffic, which made it harder to smuggle illegal drugs across borders. Border restrictions make it harder to move bulkier drugs, resulting in smugglers’ increased reliance on fentanyl – which is more potent and easier to transport in small quantities and as pills, making it easier to traffic by mail. This may have helped fentanyl spread to areas that escaped the earlier surge in fentanyl deaths.
Opioid-addicted individuals seeking prescription opioids instead of heroin have also been affected, because counterfeit pills made with fentanyl have become more common. This may explain why public health officials in Seattle and elsewhere are reporting many fatalities resulting from use of counterfeit pills.
More than anything else, what drives opioid-addicted individuals to continue using is that without opioids they will experience severe symptoms of withdrawal. Treatment, especially with buprenorphine and methadone, has to be easy to access or addicted individuals will continue using heroin, prescription opioids or illict fentanyl to stave off withdrawal. Some treatment centers innovated in the face of lockdowns, for example, by allowing more patients to take methadone unsupervised at home, but this may not have been enough to offset the disruption to treatment services.
In the past, one slip might not be the end of the world for someone in recovery. But given the extraordinarily dangerous black market opioid supply, any slip can result in death.
================================================================ Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, pharma CEOs pricing addicts out of treatment (and failing to make it widely avaiable) are Republicans. The people standing in the way of our having a public health system which works for everyone are Reublicans. So are the voters who believe Democrats are a cabal of cannibalistic pedophiles. It’s not like we haven’t seen this movie before – in real life – long before movies even existed. It has been Jews libeled, it has been Knights Templar libeled, and now it;s Democrats. And people are dying in large numbers. I wouldn’t call the number of overdoses last year alone and the number of people who subscribe to The Conversation’s newsletters (140,000) “close” exactly, but they are definitely in the same order of magnirude.
