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I would stick with that if I were you.

Pfizer Will Seek OK for Booster Shot That Could Fight Delta Variant Joe Raedle/Getty News There’s some good news from Pfizer: Initial tests indicate that a COVID vaccine booster shot could dramatically improve protection against the virus and even the dreaded Delta variant. The drugmaker announced Thursday that it plans to seek federal approval for a third shot that would ideally be administered between six and 12 months after the second vaccine. At the same time, CNBC reports, Pfizer and BioNTech are also developing an updated vaccine that would be tailored to fight the more-contagious Delta variant, which is now the dominant strain in the U.S. and many other countries.

Welcome back. As Charlie Brown said, "I need all the friends I can get." This is where the passion lives.

I am coming to suspect that players get a load of Regina in their first day and decide that they want out at all costs.

It's the American way. I'm OK, and screw you.

What The Lambda COVID-19 Variant Means For Us Right Now. The newest coronavirus strain has been reported in 29 countries. Here's what you need to know. The lambda variant is now a virus of interest, according to the World Health Organization. The delta variant first identified in India is spreading widely in the United States, accounting for more than half of all new COVID-19 infections. But even as it becomes the dominant strain here, threatening to increase new infections among unvaccinated individuals, a new variant, called the lambda variant, or C.37, has also caught public health officials’ attention. The strain was recently identified as a “variant of interest” by the World Health Organization, and health experts are watching it closely as it spreads throughout South America and elsewhere in the world. Here’s what you need to know about it: Where did experts discover it and where has it spread? The lambda variant was first identified in Peru in late 2020 but was only classified a variant of interest by the WHO in mid-June 2021. That’s because it has now spread to 29 countries and seems to be circulating pretty widely in South America. In Peru, for example, lambda accounts for roughly 80% of all new infections that have been sequenced since this spring. It is also increasingly prevalent in Chile and Argentina, the WHO warned. There is reason to be concerned about where lambda is spreading. South America has emerged as a COVID-19 hotspot, accounting for roughly a quarter of the global death toll from the virus. There are many factors likely contributing to South America’s current crisis, including low vaccination rates, crowded cities and the emergence of new variants like this one, The Wall Street Journal reported. Why is lambda a variant of interest? Lambda is being closely monitored by international health agencies precisely because it is circulating so widely in South America and because it has spread to other areas of the world, including the United States, Britain and Canada. The WHO considers a new mutation a “variant of interest” if it has genetic changes that affect virus characteristics (like how transmissible it is or how it affects disease severity) and if it has led to significant community transmission or clusters. However, at this point lambda hasn’t yet risen to the level of being a “variant of concern,” such as the delta variant, which has really pressing global public health significance. What The Lambda COVID-19 Variant Means For Us Right Now | HuffPost Life

Damn. Just when it looked like we were getting down to decent numbers.

I have never been as excited for the start of the Bomber/CFL season as I am for this one. Hurry Saturday!!!!!!

I resemble that remark.

Pfizer vaccine less effective against delta variant A study conducted in Israel found that the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine is somewhat less effective against the more infectious delta variant, though it was still found to be effective at preventing severe illness. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the Pfizer vaccine protected 64 percent of immunized people during an outbreak of the delta variant, a sharp drop when compared to the 94 percent of people it had previously been shown to protect. However, the shot was still 94 percent effective at preventing severe illness, a slight decrease from the 97 percent that were kept from experiencing severe illness previously. And apparently a new, more virulent virus mutation has emerged.

Republicans want "18 more months of chaos" — followed by the end of democracy. Rep. Chip Roy said it out loud, but the GOP's plan is no secret: Bring democracy to a standstill, then end it. Today's Republican Party is a fascist, criminal, sociopathic, anti-democratic, white supremacist, theocratic, plutocratic and cultlike organization. Its leaders (and followers) have repeatedly and publicly shown the world that they embrace such values and behavior. In response, the Democratic Party, the mainstream news media and too many average Americans have responded to the Age of Trump and its horrors by trying to convince themselves that the Republican Party and larger right-wing movement are something other than what they have shown themselves to be. And of course there is the fetish of "bipartisanship." Under its sway, the Democratic Party's leadership and too many among the mainstream news media and commentariat have convinced themselves that compromise with Republicans, no matter how radicalized and extremist they have become, is something virtuous in itself. If the road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions, that truism is especially correct here. President Biden and the Democrats have attempted to work with an opposition that has at almost every moment shown itself to be an enemy of democracy, up to and including its support for Trump's ongoing coup attempt and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. As I have previously written, "white identity politics and white rage are more important than pocketbook issues for many of today's Republican voters." The only meaningful way Biden and the Democrats can fight back must begin with "acknowledging that this crisis of democracy is existential" and acting accordingly: This means not cooperating with the Republicans on any policies in the name of "bipartisanship." Protecting American democracy should be the Democrats' No. 1 priority. To work with Republicans is to legitimize them as responsible partners in government, when in reality today's Republican Party is an extremist, anti-democratic and white supremacist criminal organization. Today's Republican Party is ultimately incapable of being a partner in responsible governance. It rejects basic principles of democracy and compromise towards a shared goal of serving the public good. Instead, the right-wing movement's primary goals are chaos, obstruction and destruction, with the aim of delegitimizing the very idea of democracy itself — except as a meaningless term used to describe one-party Republican rule. Republican leaders, officials and other spokespeople know this is the strategy and have repeatedly admitted to it. Leaked video footage of Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican, saying precisely that is only the latest example. As reported by Common Dreams: Newly leaked video footage of a recent event hosted by the right-wing group Patriot Voices shows Republican Rep. Chip Roy of Texas openly admitting that his party wants "18 more months of chaos and the inability to get stuff done" as President Joe Biden, a bipartisan group of senators, and congressional Democrats work to pass climate and infrastructure legislation. "Honestly, right now, for the next 18 months, our job is to do everything we can to slow all of that down to get to December of 2022," Roy says in the clip, referring to the month after that year's midterm elections. Republicans need to flip just a handful of seats to take back the House and Senate. "I don't vote for anything in the House of Representatives right now," Roy says in response to an audience member's question about the sweeping infrastructure and safety-net package that Democrats are planning to pass unilaterally alongside a White House-backed bipartisan deal. Republicans want "18 more months of chaos" — followed by the end of democracy | Salon.com As Indivisible co-director Ezra Levin noted on Twitter, "Chip Roy got caught saying it out loud, but to be clear this has been [Mitch] McConnell's plan all along."

Not an Eternally Optimistic statement.

The Big Lie at the Big Box Store: Sears, Kmart Sold Shirts Proclaiming Insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt an 'American Patriot' The big box retailers pulled the products from their online marketplaces after being called out on Twitter six months to the day of the Capitol riots. In the six months since the insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, there have been countless lies told by the right wing about the events and intent of that day, but perhaps the biggest is that the shooting of Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to breach the Speaker’s Lobby through a smashed window somehow rendered the military veteran turned QAnon conspiracist a martyr. To be sure, Babbitt’s death was senseless—senseless because it was in service to the irrational, inane, yet persistent lie that Donald Trump is somehow the duly elected president of the United States. (Spoiler alert: He’s not.) However, that hasn’t stopped fellow conspiracists from praising Babbitt as a “patriot”—and now, American retailers seeking to profit from the third-party retailer market are getting caught in the crosshairs. As the nation and media reflected on the insurrection and ongoing investigation on Tuesday, Aaron Rupar, associate editor of politics & policy at Vox made another discovery at two of the country’s most recognizable retail brands. Sears and Kmart, both American big box pioneers now under the same ownership, were each selling “Ashli Babbitt ‘American Patriot’” t-shirts in their online marketplaces. Sears, Kmart Sold Shirts Proclaiming Insurrectionist Ashli Babbitt an 'American Patriot' (theroot.com)

If nothing else, it brought some needed publicity to the CFL during a time when COVID was throttling every sport. Who knows, it may have perked up some interest in US players to come check the CFL out. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

More than the money that he is leaching from his supporters, which is important, Trump has a desperate need to see himself as having been cheated out of his rightful place in the winner's circle of the White House. From all reports, Trump's father was a demanding, impossible to please authoritarian Nazi sympathizer. Any son who has had a father-figure like Trump's, is riddled with self-doubt and a visceral need to refuse to admit any failing whatsoever. Any less than perfect victory is a confirmation that he is not good enough and never will be, and the sadistic nature of the father is adopted by the son. Make no mistake- if sending one or all of his children and associates to jail will keep him out of jail, he will absolutely do it.

In legalese there is something referred to by the acronym "SLAP" otherwise known as a strategically leveraged lawsuit. The aim is to not win, but to publicly defend self and hope that the suit will intimidate the defendant. Judges do have the option of throwing the suit out of court immediately as frivolous and even awarding punitive damages to the defendant. However, the GOP has stacked the courts as much as they could with toadies, so who knows what will happen.

The Spaniards managed to kill over 10 million without the help of automatic weapons or explosives. The practice of slaughtering opponents is not restricted to Europe or North America. It happened in Africa, Asia and South America. Even the aboriginal peoples in North America practiced genocides when able. There's a lot of blood on a lot of hands. And it is going on in mainland China right now with Uighurs, Mongolians and Tibetans.

The attackers apparently posed as American DEA agents.

Asian culture is fixated on rhino horns as an aphrodisiac. For a while, game wardens in Africa and Asia were spraying a penetrating dye onto the horns of the live animals but it seems the poachers found a way to get around that.

Trump reportedly 'shocked' his former chief of staff with refusal to stop praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler Back in 2017, the inventor of Godwin's Law made it clear that comparing someone to a Nazi, when they are literally praising the Nazis, was completely fair. That came during the sequence of events at Charlottesville, where violent white supremacists marched to Nazi slogans and one deliberately killed peaceful protester Heather Heyer by driving over her with a car. Trump responded by a statement that there were "very fine people" on both sides of the events, then he doubled-down on that statement with a claim that he was only supporting the Nazis in their praise for a Confederate traitor. In 2018, Trump explicitly declared "I'm a nationalist," in a speech ostensibly supporting Ted Cruz. "You know, they have a word," said Trump. "It sort of became old-fashioned. It's called a nationalist. And I say really, we're not supposed to use that word. You know what I am? I am a nationalist. Use that word." So when The Guardian published an account on Wednesday morning that Trump defended Hitler while on a tour of military cemeteries … is anyone really surprised? "Hitler," said Trump, "did a lot of good things." The pro-Hitler conversation is from a book titled Frankly, We Did Win This Election, by Wall Street Journal reported Michael Bender which is slated for publication next week. On a 2018 trip to Europe in which Trump was supposed to go to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery to visit the graves of 2,300 Americans who were killed in World War I. Instead, Trump skipped out on the visit, claiming it was too wet, while actually telling his advisers that he had no interest in visiting soldiers who were "losers" and "suckers." During that visit, it was already known that then chief of staff John Kelly tried to explain the circumstances of both World Wars, to explain how the actions taken after World War I contributed to the rise of the Nazis, and how that led to World War II. Trump responded by saying that he "didn't understand why the United States would intervene on the side of the Allies." But the new book goes further. It explains how Trump "stunned" Kelly by his direct support of Hitler. Kelly reputedly told Trump that he was wrong to support the murderous dictator, "but Trump was undeterred." Instead, Trump kept pointing to how Hitler supposedly pulled Germany out of its economic slump in the 1930s. Trump reportedly 'shocked' his former chief of staff with refusal to stop praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler - Alternet.org (This is further proof that even a diaper can hold only so much poop, and then start leaking out)

The first step towards change is awareness, which is not always kind or comforting. Everything costs something, and the impetus of change is discomfort.

Are you accusing our PM of being sleepy?

And they were not alone. This does not exonerate the Canadian politicians and religious leaders or the British in any way, but pretty much all invading/occupying forces (not just armies) have done much the same. It seems to be a tragic fact that humans are not only capable of doing such things, but willing and eager to so so.