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And people actually pay to see that.

I think it was euthanasia- putting a badly wounded creature out of its misery. When the reboot was announced, the lead actor went on a PR junket explaining how difficult life was for her in the original series. My heart went out to her. Not.

And DeSantis is contiinuing his fanatical crusade against any and all restrictive measures. Apparently Florida is now completely unregulated.

I disagree with your identifying Communist Russia as leftist. They are an oligarchy which wears the cloak of a socialist state. The closest examples to socialist societies as designed by Marx, Engels and Trotsky would be Hutterite communities, and many aboriginal societies prior to contact with Occidental influences.

Can you imagine what they would have done to him had they lost?

Heck, I would accept examples slagging the left only.

Maine Lawmaker Whose Wife Just Died of COVID Joins Anti-Vaxx Rally Chris Johansen, who has been a fierce opponent of pandemic restrictions, joined a rally at which a colleague compared the governor to a Nazi. A Republican legislator in Maine who lost his wife to COVID-19 last week appeared at a rally on Tuesday that featured a GOP colleague who compared the state’s Democratic governor to a Nazi doctor who performed deadly experiments on Jews during the Holocaust. State Rep. Chris Johansen, who emerged in the early days of the pandemic as a fierce opponent of public health-related restrictions, joined a group of lawmakers at the event in Augusta. State Rep. Heidi Sampson delivered a speech to the crowd that baselessly accused Gov. Janet Mills, who has introduced a vaccine mandate for health-care workers, of operating a government campaign to test “experimental” vaccines on unknowing citizens. She described Mills as the “reincarnated” Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, who performed deadly experiments on Jewish people in Auschwitz death camps during the Holocaust. “Do I need to remind you of the late 1930s and into the 40s in Germany. And the experiments with Josef Mengele,” Sampson said according to a video from the event posted online. “What was it? A shot. And these were crimes against humanity. And what came out of that? The Nuremberg Code. The Nuremberg Trial. Informed consent is at the top and violating that is punishable by death.” Chris Johansen, Maine Lawmaker Whose Wife Cindy Johansen Died of COVID, Joins Anti-Vaxx Rally (thedailybeast.com)

Poison Control Hotline Sees Call Spike Over COVID Truther’s ‘Horse Paste’ Drug -Getty Mississippi’s poison control center was forced to send out a safety alert Friday after it received multiple reports of people ingesting an animal version of ivermectin, a drug that’s been touted and disputed as a COVID-19 treatment. It said a certain group of people has been taking a form of ivermectin made for livestock, WMC reports, and that 85 percent of those calls featured mild adverse responses. “Patients should be advised to not take any medications intended to treat animals and should be instructed to only take ivermectin as prescribed by their physician,” the alert read. “Animal drugs are highly concentrated for large animals and can be highly toxic for humans.” The version of the drug intended for people has been pushed by some conservative figures as an alternative COVID treatment but some of the studies pushing ivermectin have been discredited. While the poison control center did not say why people opted for the animal drug, The Daily Beast previously found multiple people who resorted to Amazon to obtain the animal version due to its easy availability. Poison Control Hotline Sees Call Spike Over COVID Truther’s ‘Horse Paste’ Drug (thedailybeast.com)

New proof that Trump's Capitol riot is still a big danger Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) circulated a memo warning that Donald Trump and his allies were stoking the threat of domestic terrorism by hyping the Big Lie. Trump was holding rallies earlier in the summer to keep his followers riled up with false claims that he is the "real" winner of the 2020 election and President Joe Biden only won through "fraud." He also spent the summer hyping a fake "audit" of the votes in Arizona. Meanwhile, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who has found a second career spending all of his money on being a fascist propagandist, was pushing the idea that he has his hands on some shocking evidence that would lead to Trump being "reinstated" as president on August 13. Both claims have gone up in smoke, but they nonetheless served their main purpose: feeding anger and frustration to the hardcore Trump base. That rage then has to go somewhere, which is why DHS was concerned. "Some conspiracy theories associated with reinstating former President Trump have included calls for violence if desired outcomes are not realized," the memo noted. Indeed, it's hard to imagine that Trump and his allies are envisioning anything less. After all, part of Trump's schtick these past few months has been to rewrite the failed insurrection he incited on January 6 as a noble act of patriotism and to paint the people who were arrested or even killed for their part as martyrs for the Trumpist cause. There's no reason to do that other than wanting to see more of the same. Well, unsurprisingly, Trump just got his not-so-secret wish. On Thursday, 49-year-old Floyd Ray Roseberry of Grover, North Carolina was arrested in Washington D.C. after making threats of a bombing that resulted in a five-hour standoff with police. As the Washington Post reports, during the standoff, "Roseberry delivered a tirade over a Facebook live video in which he assailed Biden and other Democrats, called for a revolt against the federal government and claimed there were other 'patriots' waiting in vehicles elsewhere in D.C." "The revolution is on, it's here, it's today," he declared. There's ample proof, of course, that Roseberry is a Trump enthusiast whose social media feed featured posts of him participating in "stop the steal" nonsense. He also posted videos about the Lindell-and-Trump-driven conspiracy theory that Trump was going to be "reinstated." But one hardly needs all this evidence because anyone arguing in good faith already knows what's going on here. Just as DHS warned, Trump and his allies have been encouraging violence all summer by hyping the Big Lie. Of course one of their followers heeded the call. As Chauncey DeVega has explained at Salon, this is a strategy known as "stochastic terrorism." Propagandists stir up outrage and drop heavy hints with the hopes that followers will read between the lines and choose violence. Trump is a natural at this sort of thing, as expressing his wishes through implication is how he does business. "He doesn't give you questions. He doesn't give you orders," Trump's former lawyer, Michael Cohen explained in his 2019 House testimony. "He speaks in code." Trump communicates, in other words, like a mob boss and has admitted that, "I did not make a statement that, 'You have to do this or I'm not going to give you A.' I wouldn't do that." To be clear, Trump's code isn't subtle. Holding out the dead Capitol insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt as a martyr and stating that the goals of the insurrectionists were good is about skirting, but not crossing, the line of openly calling for more terroristic violence to avoid criminal exposure for incitement. But keep up that patter of "woe to the noble insurrectionists" and "their cause is just" long enough and more people will pick up what is being put down. New proof that Trump's Capitol riot is still a big danger - Alternet.org

In Saskatchewan, this ad would have an entirely different meaning.

Alabama town declares COVID state of emergency ahead of Trump's upcoming rally As former President Donald Trump prepares to visit Cullman, Ala., for an upcoming Republican rally on Saturday, the city has declared a health-related state of emergency due to the resurgence of COVID-19. Due to the recent resurgence of COVID, Alabama is struggling to mitigate the spread of the virus as hospital systems face bed shortages due to increases in the hospitalizations of COVID patients. Speaking to AL.com, Luke Satterfield, an attorney for the city of Cullman, recently spoke out about the steps the city is taking to prevent more strain on the state's hospital systems. "We want to prevent as many non-Covid related things as possible, so our hospital can use its resources to focus on the pandemic and its variants," Satterfield said. "We don't want to put any extra strain on them." The announcement comes after Alabama's COVID report on Wednesday, August 18. The state reported 3,890 new COVID-19 cases and now has a seven-day fluctuating average of approximately 3,000 new cases, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) COVID data tracking system. Despite the alarming rise in COVID cases in the area, NBC News 15 reports that thousands of individuals are expected to attend the rally. "We think the hotels are going to be booked out and we think this is going to be something, people are going to come from all over the state," said Waid Harbison, Former Chair of the Cullman County Republican Party. Harbison went on to note that those planning to attend understand the risk, as well. Alabama town declares COVID state of emergency ahead of Trump's upcoming rally - Alternet.org

Mike Lindell Is Hiding A County Clerk Amid FBI Probe Of A Vote Data Leak: Report MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has provided a secret safe house for a Colorado county clerk amid an FBI investigation into a leak of voting machine passwords in the county to a presumed QAnon leader, Vice News reported Thursday. Lindell told Vice that he initially took Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters to Texas after she spoke at his bizarre Cyber Symposium last week in South Dakota — where he again failed to provide promised proof that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against former President Donald Trump, whom Lindell supports. Lindell said he has since whisked Peters off to a new secret location after a member of his own security team revealed her whereabouts. “She’s worried about her safety; these people are ruthless,” Lindell told Vice. He was referring to Dominion Voting Systems, which is suing Lindell for $1.3 billion for defamation over his baseless claims of election fraud. There is no indication Dominion has threatened anyone’s safety. Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold last week accused Peters of allowing an unauthorized individual access to election equipment made by Dominion. Mike Lindell Is Hiding A County Clerk Amid FBI Probe Of A Vote Data Leak: Report | HuffPost

GOP Leader Who Fought Against Vaccine Dies After Weeks-Long Battle With Coronavirus Pressley Stutts, a Republican leader in South Carolina who fought COVID-19 vaccination efforts, died on Thursday of the coronavirus after a weekslong battle, including six days spent on a ventilator, The Greenville News reported. Stutts, a 64-year-old veteran, frequently shared conspiracy theories about the virus, the vaccines and the 2020 election on Facebook, including in posts made from his ICU bed. Pressley Stutts was well known as the leader of the Greenville Tea Party. Stutts served as an executive committee member of the Greenville County Republican Party and the leader of the Greenville Tea Party. He protested Vice President Kamala Harris when she visited the area in June to promote vaccination and called the effort an “ungodly initiative.” Stutts also praised a state effort to strip funding from schools that imposed mask mandates or testing requirements, and was angry about $10 gift card incentives for vaccination, writing to his 5,000 followers: “Do not sell your body nor your soul no matter the asking price.” In July, Stutts shared a Facebook post dismissing the delta variant, which was likely the one that ended his life. On Aug. 1 ― the day he went into the ICU ― Stutts insisted he had “always contended that COVID was very real” and called it “a deadly bio-weapon perpetrated upon the people of the world by enemies foreign, and perhaps domestic.” He also posted conspiracy theories about the virus online. Last year, he dismissed masks as an “illusion,” claimed in December that there had been no increase in deaths in 2020, and said, “the American public has been gaslighted by the medical industrial complex.” GOP Leader Who Fought Against Vaccine Dies After Weeks-Long Battle With Coronavirus | HuffPost

Splintering of the right wing is inevitable- the only question is how nutty the resulting parties will be.

Even though he apparently was vaccinated, that does not give him the authority to discourage appropriate use of masks during a pandemic. There is every reason to believe he was infected by someone who was infected and not wearing a mask- the chances of bring infected by someone wearing a mask are very low unless you are spending a lot of time in very close contact.

US senator from Mississippi 'fed up' with masks contracts COVID The state of Mississippi has the one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and is averaging over 3500 new coronavirus cases per day. That number just went up. U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, 70, Mississippi's senior senator and a Republican, just contracted COVID. He has been vaccinated, his office said in a statement. Wicker infamously was captured on camera on a Delta flight refusing to wear a mask last year. He has been an ardent anti-masker. US senator from Mississippi 'fed up' with masks contracts COVID - Alternet.org

Feds 'deliberately targeted' BLM protesters on orders from Trump and Barr: report The Justice Department "deliberately targeted" supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement with harsh prosecutions at the "express direction" of former President Donald Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr, according to a new report from the advocacy group Movement for Black Lives. The report detailed 326 criminal cases brought by federal prosecutors related to last year's protests following the police killings of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville. Federal prosecutors aggressively sought jurisdiction over the cases even though in more than 92% of the cases there were equivalent state-level charges that could have been brought instead, according to a data analysis by the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) clinic at the City University of New York School of Law. Federal prosecutions result in conviction at much higher rates than state charges and nearly 90% of federal charges filed against protesters carried stiffer penalties than equivalent state charges. Federal prosecutors "exploited the expansive federal criminal code" to assert jurisdiction over cases that "bore no federal interest," the report said. Prosecutors often cited federal jurisdiction in alleged offenses that happened near federal property, affected property that receives federal funding, or had some tenuous connection to interstate commerce. "The government greatly exaggerated the threat of violence" from protesters, the report said, noting that the "vast majority" of charges were for nonviolent offenses or restricted to property destruction. Prosecutors in more than 25% of cases also "stacked" charges against defendants with multiple redundant charges stemming from the same act to increase potential sentences or coerce guilty pleas, the report said. The only two violent charges related to murder were brought against counter-protesters who were reportedly members of the far-right Boogaloo Bois. Feds 'deliberately targeted' BLM protesters on orders from Trump and Barr: report - Alternet.org

I don't have a middle name- my parents were too poor.

It doesn't work that way. We are all acountable for what we have said and done, particularly when it bears on our employment.

She is personable and presents well on camera, but she is the architect of the eviscerated health care system today. I don't know how she is going to explain that away.

Ummm... extreme leftists like those who bomb abortion clinics, try to overthrow a democratically elected government, defy common-sense vaccination protocols, threaten minorities and so forth?

There will always be those who find thinking uncomfortable and difficult, so are willing to delegate their thinking and believing to others who promise certainty for the small price of unquestioning compliance.

GOP Rep. Mo Brooks issues statement against 'dictatorial Socialism' amid apparent right-wing bomb threat As law enforcement was working to defuse a bomb threat outside the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on Thursday afternoon, Alabama Republican Rep. Mo Brooks shared an incendiary statement that seemed to express sympathy for the suspect. U.S. Capitol Police identified the suspect as Floyd Roy Roseberry, a North Carolina man, when he was taken into custody around the time of Brooks' statement. The situation began when the man identified as Roseberry parked his truck on the sidewalk in front of the building and began issuing threats, claiming to have a bomb and explosive materials. Social media videos appeared to show Roseberry at the location with a potentially explosive device, making direct threats to President Joe Biden. Facebook appeared to take down the page where the video was stream during the hours-long standoff with police, but multiple reports detailed the information it contained. It showed Roseberry as a Trump supporter demanding that Democrats "step down," according to the Daily Beast, and previous videos reportedly showed him protesting Biden's 2020 victory. "The revolution's on. It's here, it's today," he said. He tried to claim that his actions had "nothing to do with politics," the Beast reported, adding that, "I don't care if Donald Trump ever become president again." But he also said at one point that he thinks Trump will be reinstated and said: " I think y'all Democrats need to step down." He hoped to get a pardon from Trump. GOP Rep. Mo Brooks issues statement against 'dictatorial Socialism' amid apparent right-wing bomb threat - Alternet.org