September 18, 2021

Women and the Coronavirus Crisis

New dossier

Supported by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and the Hans Böckler Stiftung




Almost all the huge volume of discussion of the pandemic has been entirely gender-blind. Yet, unlike the 'mancession' of 2008, this time around the economic and social impacts have hit women hard. The evidence is striking.

https://socialeurope.eu/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Women-and-the-Coronavirus-Crisis-final.pdf

September 18, 2021

Dems are coming around to the idea of adding 4 more justices, to correct for Trump's 2 'extra' picks

‘Court-Packing’ Doesn’t Seem So Radical After TX Abortion Law

https://www.thedailybeast.com/court-packing-doesnt-seem-so-radical-after-tx-abortion-law



Supreme Court expansion is no longer dismissed as a crazy idea, not after six conservative justices hijacked a Texas case to ban almost all abortions in the state, issuing their opinion on a shadow docket in the dead of night without so much as signing their names. Even the chief justice, John Roberts, who wrote a dissent, is powerless to stop the slide. The stunning ruling, designed to advance an ideological agenda, adds urgency and credibility to efforts to overhaul the Supreme Court, knowing more such lopsided decisions are surely on the way. “How can you see this happen and ignore the reality that this court has been captured by the Federalist Society and by right-wing elements of the Republican Party,” Minnesota Senator Tina Smith told The Daily Beast. “Instead of sitting and whining, I want to do something,” she said. And for Smith that meant signing on to the Judiciary Act of 2021, which would add four seats to the nine-member Supreme Court, making up for “two appointments that should have been made by other presidents,” she said, referring to Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, Trump appointees confirmed only because of Mitch McConnell’s sleight of hand in changing Senate rules.

Smith is the second Senate Democrat to support the legislation sponsored by Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. Sen. Alex Padilla of California has also said he supports court-packing, though he hasn't yet signed on to the measure. The House bill has 31 cosponsors, mainly progressives. It’s not a stampede, but Supreme Court expansion is gaining traction like a slow-moving freight train bearing down on the political process. Former California Senator Barbara Boxer, once opposed to filibuster reform, a prerequisite to Supreme Court reform, now favors court expansion and other changes, including an age limit, and she is blunt in declaring Justice Stephen Breyer, 83, should step down while Democrats have the power to confirm his replacement. “He’s had a wonderful career,” she told the Los Angeles Times. “Look, I had a wonderful career and people said, ‘How could you walk away?’ There’s a time to do it. There’s a season for everything.” Breyer isn’t taking the hint, at least not yet. He’s out and about promoting his new book, The Authority of the Court and the Peril of Politics, which is based on a high-minded lecture he gave at Harvard declaring that the Supreme Court must be seen as above politics, and he and his colleagues all get along just fine. The notion that collegiality trumps partisan politics was perhaps truer than it is today when Breyer joined the Supreme Court, almost 30 years ago.

“I agree with Justice Breyer that the legitimacy of the court depends on it being seen as above politics—but it’s not being seen that way, and I’m willing to say the Supreme Court is not legitimate anymore,” said Chris Kang with Demand Justice. “What the court did in the Texas case is so extreme, middle of the night, an unsigned opinion, no oral arguments,” that there is no turning back. “The court can’t help itself but rule in ways that hinder its own legacy—and the rule of law,” Kang continued. To educate voters about the need for Supreme Court expansion, Demand Justice is mounting a $1.5 million grassroots campaign. The advocacy group ran ads in Minnesota to thank Smith for her support. “Legislation is the only solution that is both long lasting and immediate,” said Kang. Polling has shown Democrats support Supreme Court expansion by a wide margin, and the abortion issue unleashed by the Texas ruling could prove galvanizing for Democrats in next year’s midterms. After the Supreme Court announced in May that it would take a Mississippi case challenging Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion, Sarah Lipton-Lubet switched careers from abortion rights advocacy to become executive director of Take Back the Court, a Supreme Court reform group that was founded in 2018. “It was a clearly significant moment for me that this is the work I should be doing,” she said. “It’s a newer issue so it takes time for people to understand it. But once they do, they see it’s essential to preserving the core of our democracy.”

There’s what she refers to as “an incorrect notion that the Supreme Court is untouchable, and you’re stuck with the court you found.” Nine is not a magic number. The size of the Supreme Court has varied from just six justices in 1789 when the Constitution took effect to a high of 10 during the Civil War. The number nine was established by law in 1869. The phrase “court packing” has a negative connotation going back to FDR’s attempt to add justices that would be friendly to his New Deal. FDR’s effort backfired when Congress wouldn’t go along with it, but the Supreme Court tempered its opposition to his agenda after he won reelection, negating the need for more justices. Today’s Supreme Court doesn’t appear to hold out any change in the tribal political stance of the three newest conservative justices—Neil Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett—and the two other longer-serving conservatives, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, have demonstrated a solid allegiance to the Republican right on social and cultural issues. Adding four justices, as the House and Senate propose, would bring the total to 13, identical to the number of circuit courts. “The Markey bill makes sense. Four members makes sense,” said Smith. “People tend to focus on one reform, but there is a portfolio of reforms that we can look at including a judicial code of ethics.”

snip

September 17, 2021

John Legend drops fact-bombs on Kyrsten Sinema -- after she defended the filibuster at his house

https://www.rawstory.com/john-legend-kyrsten-sinema-filibuster/

Entertainer and activist John Legend listed multiple reasons to eliminate the filibuster during an interview by MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, which is scheduled to air during his Sunday evening show. "John, I have to ask, if you could have a conversation one-on-one with either Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema, what would you say to them?" Hasan asked.

"It's funny, because I actually spoke to Kyrsten Sinema," Legend replied. "I did a fundraiser at our house in Los Angeles for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — this was years ago, two or three years ago — and she at the time was vociferously standing up for the filibuster," he explained.

In addition to being an EGOT winner for his Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards, Legend has also been a longtime political activist. "And I just can't state more clearly how wrong I think she is on this issue," he explained. "The filibuster is not in the Constitution, that's a fact."

"And the history and tradition of the rule has been to exclude black people from our democracy, that has been the principle use of the filibuster over the years," he noted. "It's time to get rid of it," Legend argued. "It's allowing 40 senators, at any time, to derail the the will of the majority."

https://twitter.com/mehdirhasan/status/1438976430717669384

September 17, 2021

This Police Department Is So Bad, a Cop Reported It to Black Lives Matter

https://www.thedailybeast.com/this-police-department-is-so-bad-a-cop-reported-it-to-black-lives-matter?ref=home



By September 2020, police officer Robert Black was at his wit’s end. Over his year of service in the department of Millersville, Tennessee, Black had allegedly been subjected to sexual harassment, including from a female officer who used a racist slur while grabbing his genitals. The police chief, whom Black suspected of harboring Ku Klux Klan ties, had allegedly made disparaging comments about Black’s biracial son. The assistant police chief was under investigation for allegedly assaulting his wife during a dispute over an alleged affair with a drug suspect. Through it all, management allegedly silenced officers’ complaints by instructing them to support the “thin blue line.” “Nobody would listen to what was going on up there,” Black told The Daily Beast. “Nobody cared.”

So Black made a fake Facebook profile, reached out to Black Lives Matter organizers, and blew the whistle on his department. Days later, he was fired. At least two other officers who allegedly clashed with management departed soon thereafter. In a new lawsuit, first reported by Nashville’s NewsChannel 5, Black and former Millersville Police sergeant Joshua Barnes describe a culture of harassment and intimidation in their former department. Both men cite a pattern of alleged racist behavior from the department’s leadership—directed at Barnes because he is Black, and at Black because he is white with a biracial son.

The lawsuit’s three defendants are Millersville Police chief Mark Palmer, assistant chief Dustin Carr, and the city of Millersville. Carr did not return The Daily Beast’s request for comment. Palmer stated that, although he would like to address the suit’s allegations, all comments must be directed through the city and its manager. Millersville’s city manager did not return requests for comment. The case is not the first time Palmer and the city have faced a lawsuit from within their ranks. In 2015, two men who had previously been Millersville’s only Black officers sued Palmer and the city, alleging racial discrimination.

In their lawsuit, which was dismissed with prejudice in 2016, both men claimed Palmer had told each of them that “I don’t like n-----s.” One of the former officers, Anthony Hayes, claimed Palmer took him on an unexplained visit to a former KKK leader’s home, where Hayes “was subjected to an extended conversation in the presence of KKK memorabilia.” Hayes also accused Palmer of placing a copy of a KKK magazine in Hayes’ locker, with a sticky note that read “this was left for you—don’t let your subscription run out.” In their response to the lawsuit, the city denied the allegations against Palmer. (The plaintiffs included in their lawsuit an email from the city manager stating that Palmer would be disciplined in the magazine incident.)

snip

September 17, 2021

What is this foolishness?! What is this?!!!!

Nicki Minaj fans in Atlanta protest the CDC in Atlanta. They say they trust her medical advice on the vaccine.

https://twitter.com/CharlesMBlow/status/1438649429662240771

September 17, 2021

Pentagon acknowledges the Aug. 29 drone strike in Afghanistan was a tragic mistake that killed 10

civilians.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/17/us/politics/pentagon-drone-strike-afghanistan.html

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon acknowledged on Friday that a U.S. drone strike in Afghanistan on Aug. 29 that officials said was necessary to prevent an attack on American troops was a tragic mistake that killed 10 civilians, including seven children, an American military official familiar with the investigation said. The explosives the military claimed were loaded in the trunk of a white Toyota sedan struck by the drone’s Hellfire missile were most likely water bottles, and a secondary explosion in the courtyard in a densely populated Kabul neighborhood where that attack took place was probably a propane or gas tank, the official said. In short, the car posed no threat at all, investigators concluded.

The official also acknowledged that the driver of the car, Zemari Ahmadi, a longtime worker for a U.S. aid group, had nothing to do with ISIS, as military officials had previously asserted. Mr. Ahmadi’s only connection to the terrorist group appeared to be a fleeting and innocuous interaction with people in what the military believed was an ISIS safehouse in Kabul, an initial link that led military analysts to make one mistaken judgment after another while tracking Mr. Ahmadi’s movements in a sedan for the next eight hours. “It was a mistake,” the official said in a briefing with three reporters before the Pentagon made the results of a military investigation public.

The findings of the inquiry by the military’s Central Command mirrored a New York Times investigation of video evidence, along with interviews with more than a dozen of the driver’s co-workers and family members in Kabul. The Times inquiry raised doubts about the U.S. version of events, including whether explosives were present in the vehicle, whether the driver had a connection to ISIS, and whether there was a second explosion after the missile struck the car. Military officials cited the investigation by The Times and other media organizations as providing valuable visual and other evidence that forced the military to reassess the judgments that led it to believe, falsely, that the sedan posed a threat.

As recently as Monday, the Pentagon was still asserting that the last U.S. drone strike in the 20-year American war in Afghanistan was necessary to prevent an attack on American troops. Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had said that the missile was launched because the military had intelligence suggesting a credible, imminent threat to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, where U.S. and allied troops were frantically trying to evacuate people. General Milley later called the strike “righteous.”

snip

September 17, 2021

Ryan Carter, 28, Dayton, OH. Anti-vaxxer. Leaves behind SO w/ baby. Dead from COVID.

According to social media posts (one posted below) Ryan Carter has died of Covid on Sept 15. He leaves behind his partner with a baby. He was an avid anti-vaxxer despite his partner being a nurse. I'll just post his anti-vaxx posts from August 5 till is last post.

https://www.sorryantivaxxer.com/post/ryan-carter-28-dayton-oh-anti-vaxxer-leaves-behind-so-w--baby-dead-from-covid



Ryan didn't want to get vaccinated and he wanted everyone to know it!











This is a video warning about some preservative in the test kit...





This is some lame video of some chick pretending to have Bells Palsy from the vaccination.





snip


Oops, he FAAFO



And.... dead.

September 17, 2021

A doctor called coronavirus vaccines 'fake.' Now he sits on an Idaho regional health board.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/09/16/idaho-covid-gop-ryan-cole/



Leaders of Idaho’s most populous county were deluged with constituent emails last month as they prepared to choose the newest member of a once-obscure regional health board. A doctor who served on the board for 15 years had just been let go over his support for pandemic restrictions. Hundreds wrote in for Ryan Cole, a doctor — backed by the Ada County Republican Party — who has called coronavirus vaccines “fake.” The Republican commissioners of the county — which encompasses the state capital, Boise — said they welcomed Cole’s “outsider” perspective and willingness to “question” established medical guidance. They appointed him over the protests of their lone Democratic colleague.

To critics, Cole’s elevation to a public health-care role is an extreme example of GOP-driven resistance to not only mandates but basic medical guidance, as the pandemic overwhelms Idaho’s hospitals like never before. The covid-19 patients filling hospital wards and prompting statewide rationing of care are almost all unvaccinated. Yet Idaho’s lieutenant governor recently suggested, falsely, that vaccinated people are more likely to die, and some officials in the heavily conservative state — where many preach “freedom” from government — consider even recommending the shots to be an overreach. As the delta variant fuels a new wave of coronavirus hospitalizations and deaths nationwide, some see Idaho as just the latest example of a pandemic response hobbled by politics and a year of intense backlash against public health restrictions.

“To watch my state implode over political decisions that have adverse consequences on health is horrifying to me. … That’s the tragedy that I’m watching unfold,” said Ted Epperly, Cole’s predecessor on the Central District Health Board, which can make broad rules such as mask mandates but had some of its authority stripped this year. David Pate, a friend of Epperly and a former CEO of Boise-based St. Luke’s Health System, said that if there is no political will or ability to enact mask mandates, authorities need to at least give people good information. He said the combination of decreasing public health officials’ powers and then allowing them to spread falsehoods is “the worst possible outcome.” He just learned that a charter school he successfully urged to require masks has changed course after hearing a presentation from Cole.

A lifelong Republican and member of the governor’s coronavirus advisory group, Pate marveled that a segment of the right has been spreading misinformation that he said will be most deadly to their shot-spurning base. About 40 percent of Idaho’s population is fully vaccinated against the coronavirus, one of the lowest rates in the country and significantly below the national figure of 54 percent. “The America that I know and love … yes, we’re going to have intense debates,” Pate said. “We’re going to have different views of things. But any time we’ve faced an existential threat, we’ve pulled together. … We do whatever we need to do to protect our fellow man and our country. And I think it’s terrifying that that doesn’t seem to be how we’re handling this.” Cole said in an email that the news media “has disastrously and disingenuously mischaracterized me,” but he did not respond to further questions.

snip

September 16, 2021

K & R for visibility

September 16, 2021

Here is how the Nicki Minaj story was covered on CNC3 Television in Port of Spain, Trinidad.

I assure you this is worth all 2:20 and it's probably better than any U.S. network covered the story

https://twitter.com/bubbaprog/status/1438194219269689352