Read the following tweetstorm and ask yourself how it can be that 80% of Republicans can’t see something is wrong with the fact that Trump believes every single institution in America is conspiring against him. From the media and the Democrats, to the Department of Justice and the Intelligence Community to the entire judiciary including the Supreme Court to Governors and state representatives, including election officials, to the Republican Party itself they are all arrayed against him and either in on or enabling the greatest conspiracy in world history right in front of our eyes.
How can any supposedly sentient being believe this?
If a Democrat Presidential Candidate had an Election Rigged & Stolen, with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democrat Senators would consider it an act of war, and fight to the death. Mitch & the Republicans do NOTHING, just want to let it pass. NO FIGHT!
The “Justice” Department and the FBI have done nothing about the 2020 Presidential Election Voter Fraud, the biggest SCAM in our nation’s history, despite overwhelming evidence. They should be ashamed. History will remember. Never give up. See everyone in D.C. on January 6th.
Where the hell is the Durham Report? They spied on my campaign, colluded with Russia (and others), and got caught. Read the Horowitz Reports about Comey & McCabe. Even the Fake News @nytimes said “bad”. They tried it all, and failed, so now they are trying to steal the election!
The U.S. Supreme Court has been totally incompetent and weak on the massive Election Fraud that took place in the 2020 Presidential Election. We have absolute PROOF, but they don’t want to see it – No “standing”, they say. If we have corrupt elections, we have no country!
He’s obviously off his rocker. But what about all these people who see this and think it makes any sense at all?
I get that Republicans are grievance addicts. I’ve been covering that phenomenon for a long time. A lot of it is a big show to “own the libs.” But this is something else. Trump’s epic tantrum has grown from alleged Democratic voter fraud to a massive conspiracy and cover-up by everyone in the country except for him and his supporters. How can these people buy such insanity?
I’m a bit worried that the QAnon/Pizzagate conspiracy mongering of the past five years has seriously warped the brains of tens of millions of our fellow citizens and they will now believe anything. That seems … bad.
The Happy Hollandaise fundraiser goes through the end of the year so if you’re of a mind to kick in a little something below or at the snail mail address on the sidebar, I would be most grateful.
‘You don’t want somebody you love to be the last to die of coronavirus’ — Bill Gates believes the next 4 to 6 months could be the worst of the pandemic, but we can fight back pic.twitter.com/cHwWh9u5Vy
I’m a little bit freaked out by what’s happening here in Los Angeles. We are under stay-at-home orders but lots and lots of people are just refusing to do it. They are gatherindoors in groups, no masks and basically just saying “to hell with it.” I certainly understand the impulse. It’s been 10 months now and we are all sick of it. But I think I’m most horrified by the idea of tens of thousands of people dying at a time when we know that the vaccines are on the way. We just have to hold on for a few more months. If someone I loved got it now, it would be even more devastated, knowing that they were so close to being out of danger.
Christmas arrived in Los Angeles County with hospitals in a full-blown coronavirus crisis.
There are now so many patients that some hospitals are running dangerously low on oxygen and other supplies critical to treating those with COVID-19.
Patients are waiting as many as eight hours in ambulances before they can enter the emergency room. With intensive care units at 0% available capacity, health officials are urging that people avoid emergency rooms or dialing 911 for assistance unless absolutely necessary.
And in a grim reminder that the worst is still likely to come, one L.A. County health official has asked providers to reach out to patients who have serious illnesses or are medically frail to review their advanced-care directives and ensure forms are on file detailing their end-of-life care.
As dire as the conditions are now, there’s growing concern that large numbers of people may opt to once again ignore health guidance and gather with other households to celebrate the holidays — a potentially disastrous outcome experts say would all but certainly trigger another coronavirus surge that would further hammer hospitals already reeling from the Thanksgiving-fueled wave.
The stakes are already high, and the toll already devastating. On Thursday, L.A. County saw its most-ever COVID-19 deaths in a single day: 140.
As the coronavirus continues to spread widely and send unprecedented numbers of Angelenos to the hospital, hospitals in L.A. County are running dangerously low on their supplies of oxygen, a person familiar with the matter told The Times.
Oxygen is critical to treating severely ill COVID-19 patients who have begun to suffocate on account of their virus-inflamed lungs. Doctors and nurses have learned since the early days of the pandemic to, as much as possible, avoid placing patients on ventilators, which involves sticking a breathing tube down the throat.
Many patients instead receive a high-flow oxygen treatment, where oxygen is sent through plastic tubes placed in the nose.
And the need for that assistance is high. While a non-COVID patient may receive six liters of oxygen per minute, COVID-19 patients need 60 to 80 liters a minute.
So now, hospitals need 10 times more oxygen than they did before. There have been periods of time where hospitals have run dangerously low on their stores of oxygen before obtaining additional supplies, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Hospitals are also running short of other key supplies, such as the special plastic tubes used to bring the oxygen into the lungs.
This is a nightmare, and not just for people who get COVID but for anyone with a medical emergency or ongoing chronic condition that requires treatment. I just cannot understand why people aren’t doing everything they can as individuals to help out in this situation.
All you have to do right now is stay home and watch Netflix, go out and get fresh air to exercise (which we can easily do in sunny California) but be cautious around other people and wear a mask whenever you leave your pod. Essential workers have no choice but to go out there and be in the world. The least the rest of us can do is try to protect them and stop the spread by doing these small things that really aren’t that big of a deal.
I know it’s horrible for small businesses but there’s just nothing we can do except buy gift cards , get take-out, support charities and pressure our goddamned government to do what’s necessary to get us through this crisis.
We just have to hold on for a little while longer!
Update — Go to Hell Trump:
Anyway…
The Happy Hollandaise fundraiser goes through the end of the year so if you’re of a mind to kick in a little something below or at the snail mail address on the sidebar, I would be most grateful.
Tonight most of us will be at home, maybe having a touch of champagne while we watch a New Year’s eve themed movie. That’s not unusual for me these days but I do feel for younger people for whom this night is usually an excuse for a great party. I had some I can’t even remember, they were that good.
But in the meantime I hope we can all just be grateful we made it through this godforsaken 2020 and raise a glass for the 340,000 souls who succumbed to COVID and their families. It didn’t have to be this bad.
Next year has to be better. It WILL be better. Hang in there.
Thanks again to all who contributed to the Hullabaloo Happy Hollandaise Extravaganza. It means more than you know.
Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
The incoming Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration should keep its pledge to “champion a $15 minimum wage, affordable health care for all and federal action to address systemic racism,” Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II and Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis urge in the New York Times. They have a few more words of advice from the households with incomes of less than $50,000 that supported Biden by an 11.5-point margin:
Voters also supported at least 14 ballot initiatives across the country that increase taxes on the wealthy, protect workers, address housing issues and homelessness, bridge the digital divide, fund transportation, confront the criminalization of poverty and limit campaign contributions. Voters across the country demanded health care, living wages, the decriminalization of their communities and a system that taxes those who can afford it most. Sixty-three percent of Americans now say that the government has a responsibility to provide health care for all. Around two-thirds of Biden voters in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Nevada say that systemic racism is a significant problem, and the same proportion of Americans surveyed last year favored a $15 minimum wage.
Part of the support for Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris is explained by the deep suffering and desperate need that exist in a nation with 140 million poor and low-wealth citizens. Since May, at least eight million people have fallen below the poverty line, tens of millions of Americans may face eviction in the coming months, and families with the lowest incomes have disproportionately lost jobs. It’s no wonder so many used their votes to challenge decades of neoliberal trickle-down policies that have not worked for so many.
To fulfill the mandate that the 2020 electorate has given them, Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris must reject the politics of austerity and fulfill their commitment to policies that address human needs and cultivate human capacities. While the Georgian runoffs will determine whether Democrats have a Senate majority, the new administration can take a bold stand now and commit to policies that would lift Americans regardless of their party affiliation. We must have immediate relief targeted to the Black, Native, poor and low-income communities that have suffered most from Covid-19, alongside universal action to address the root causes of inequality by guaranteeing every American access to quality health care, a $15 minimum wage, the right to form and join a union, and access to affordable housing.
To address the political obstruction that has made so many other policy changes impossible, the Biden administration must push to expand voting rights to include universal early voting, online and same-day registration, re-enfranchisement of citizens affected by mass incarceration, statehood for Washington, D.C., and full restoration of the protections of the Voting Rights Act. Real change can be sustained only if the level of voter participation we witnessed this year is sustained.
Is that before or after Biden cleans up the public health disaster left over from the Trump maladministration? Whatever. It is a helluva lot to undertake without having control of U.S, Senate. Georgia is on my mind. Progress on this sweeping agenda is in the balance.
There is nothing new on the list to progressive readers, and even more the nation’s “most vulnerable people” will require to recover. Not just from the tragic toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken this year, but from the historic legacy of neglect and oppression low-income Americans of all hues have suffered under a system that gives too much lip-service to its ideals while giving its ear freely to the richest and best-connected.
Same as it ever was. Everywhere. In that the U.S. is decidedly unexceptional.
I’m thinking Biden won’t find much time for golf.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here (or at the P.O. box shown in the sidebar):
Haven Hamilton (after an assassination attempt): Y’all take it easy now. This isn’t Dallas, it’s Nashville! They can’t do this to us here in Nashville! Let’s show them what we’re made of. Come on everybody, sing! Somebody, sing! [Nashville (1975)]
Authorities are still attempting to determine the author(s) of the massive blast Christmas morning in downtown Nashville, Tenn. So there is some time yet before politicians and pundits tell us whom we must blame and, more cynically, fear.
By accounts so far, whoever turned an older recreational vehicle into a large bomb put some thought behind it. It is still unclear 24 hours later what the bomb’s intended target was. Mass casualties apparently was not the intent. A warning over a loudspeaker in the vehicle gave a handful of police officers just enough time before the blast to evacuate residents in apartments near 166 Second Avenue North. Only three people were injured and sent to the hospital. It is not known whether anyone was inside the vehicle when it exploded.
Christmas morning at 6:30 a.m. local time was not the time to catch a lot of pedestrians on the street. Plus, the bomber(s) took pains to get the neighborhood evacuated. Perhaps the goal was generating fear itself.
Residents awoke to the sounds of gunshots about 5:30 a.m. Those may have been recorded to get their attention:
[Betsy] Williams, the Second Avenue resident, said she was asleep with her wife, Kim Madlom, when they were jolted awake by the sound of gunfire a little before 5:30 a.m. and called 911. When the sound repeated in the same pattern, she figured it must have been a recording, she said.
“It was like it was being fired right next to your head almost,” Madlom told The Post. “It was unrealistically loud in retrospect, and it was the exact same pattern all three times.”
Peering out her third-story window, the 59-year-old said she could see an RV parked across the street. It was a light-colored vehicle the size of a small bus that looked at least a couple of decades old, she said.
As she surveyed the scene, a voice came booming from the camper: “It was saying, ‘This vehicle has a bomb, you must evacuate the area.’”
Then a countdown message began, telling people they had 15 minutes to leave, Madlom said. She and her three family members decided to flee. “That was the thing that made us go,” she said.
While we await more data from investigators or a manifesto or statement from the perpetrator(s), the motive behind the bombing remains unclear. But the nature of fear is again on my mind.
Tennessee is the top COVID-19 hot spot in the country at the moment according to CDC data: 119.1 cases per 100,000 over the last seven days. Despite surging infections including the state’s first lady’s, Republican Gov. Bill Lee speaking from quarantine resists imposing a statewide mask mandate:
“Many think a statewide mandate would improve mask wearing, many think it would have the opposite effect,” he said Sunday. “This has been a heavily politicized issue. Please do not get caught up in that and don’t misunderstand my belief in local government on this issue. Masks work and I want every Tennessean to wear one.”
Lee’s executive order limits indoor gatherings to 10 people, but excludes churches, weddings and funerals. Days after a Feb. 29 funeral in Albany, Ga., the coronavirus hit the town “like a bomb.” Taking notice of that is too political for Lee.
Masks are recommended in Tennessee, but not mandated. Freedom and all that.
Just south of Nashville in Columbia (see map), freedom is ringing, masks-optional.
Bombs people take seriously. Deadly viruses, not so much. The situation recalls a post from 2015 on fear itself. A CNN/ORC poll found that 80% of Americans believed ISIS posed a serious threat to the United States, although as a practical matter what deaths an ISIS attack here would cause might number in the dozens or in the hundreds. Right now, the coronavirus is killing every day more Americans than died in the September 11 attacks.
We took off our shoes at airports for years because one clown tried unsuccessfully to blow up his sneakers on a plane. But wearing a mask to protect our neighbors from a virus killing 3,000 each day is a damnable infringement on liberty?
I have a 1982 Scientific American article here (Xeroxed. Remember kids?) in which study subjects were asked to rank a sampling of 30 sources of risk. Nuclear power topped the list for the League of Women Voters and college students, although it ranked 20 in terms of attributable deaths. Business professionals ranked nuclear power No. 8. Pesticides also made the top ten for the League and college students. It showed up at 28 on the researchers’ list. At the bottom of list of risks for all three groups? Vaccinations. Where would they rank today? We’re not very good at this.
Waldman writes, “The same people who want everyone to constantly proclaim the United States’ awesomeness often act as though we’re a nation on the verge of destruction, so weak and vulnerable are we in the face of knife-wielding masked men thousands of miles away.”
But an unseen virus that’s killing thousands of Americans each day? No big deal. Big explosions down the street? Those we pay attention to for a couple of days. Like mass-casualty shootings at outdoor concerts.
It is as if there is an inverse relationship between the psychic proximity of a threat and our response to it.
I once visited a militiaman’s compound east of Knoxville (long story) where he was prepared for just that [a zombie apocalypse]. Or for Obama’s jack-booted thugs to come to the end of the valley to confiscate his guns. He’s still stockpiling and waiting, one supposes. Since there are no cases reported within miles of East Tennessee, there’s still time to grab extra ammo at the Newport Walmart.
That was when the pandemic was new. Now the virus is all over Tennessee. The problem is, I guess, bullets are not that effective against a virus. So, it don’t worry me.
It’s Happy Hollandaise time here at Hullabaloo. If you’d like to drop a little something in the old Christmas stocking you can do so here:
Virtually all the reporting I’ve seen today (admittedly, very sporadic) has portrayed the hold up in the relief bill as being a function of “Washington” failing to do its job. This is not true. The Democrats passed a relief bill back in May. They were willing to negotiate, came down significantly in their dollar amount and ended up voting for a bill that was less than a third of what they thought was necessary just to get something into the hands of people who need it before the end of the year.
The Senate Republicans refused to even negotiate, leaving the White House and the House Dems to haggle for months until they finally found it in themselves to half-heartedly agree to a bill last week. And then Donald Trump came in at the last minute and threw sand in the gears because he’s mad at Mitch McConnell.
This is all the fault of the Republican Party and President Trump. Democrats have been trying to get help to people for months.
The media just can’t seem to break the habit of saying “congress” can’t get hings done and blaming both sides. It’s hurting the country because it misleads people into thinking that it doesn’t matter who they vote for.
It. does.
Please tell them the fucking truth, then! President Trump is sabotaging a deal that was already stingy because Republicans wanted it that way. "Congress can't agree" is empty drivel that informs no one. https://t.co/THysZpzLym
‘The government grinch cannot stop Christmas’ — Pro-Trump conservative moms rallied in D.C. to push back on so-called attempts to ‘cancel’ the holidays pic.twitter.com/QnJThpJtPO
At the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, with travel restrictions in place worldwide, we launched a new series — The World Through a Lens — in which photojournalists help transport you, virtually, to some of our planet’s most beautiful and intriguing places. This week, Marcus Westberg shares a collection of images from his home country of Sweden.
I consistently give the same advice to aspiring photographers: Wherever home is, that’s where you should begin.
It isn’t always easy advice to follow. After all, our understandable curiosity and fascination with the exotic — that which is different from what we are used to — sends us abroad by the hundreds of millions every year. And, having lived and worked everywhere but in Sweden for most of my life, I’ve been terrible at following it myself.
For me, Sweden has always been a place to rest, relax and spend time with family. It’s rarely been a destination to explore in the ways that I do in Madagascar, Malawi or Zambia — until now.
A fresh layer of snow and a sky full of color and movement — welcome to winter in northern Sweden. Lapland Guesthouse and the small hamlet of Kangos are located 67.29 degrees north. New York City is at 40.71 degrees north, Toronto at 43.44, and Anchorage at 61.13.
With all of my foreign assignments and trips canceled this year, I decided to make the most of the closed borders and travel north from my home near Stockholm. What began as a single two-week trip quickly turned into a series of journeys that lasted several months and spanned the entire year, starting and finishing in midwinter.
Late afternoon aurora borealis.
The first thing to know about spending winter in northern Sweden is that sunburn won’t be much of an issue. The second is that you’ll want to pack a headlamp and lots of warm clothes. Sweden spans roughly the same latitudes as Alaska, and, while climate change is bringing milder winters in its wake, it doesn’t have any impact on the length of our daylight.
I urge you to read the whole thing if you can. His photos capture that weird arctic light which often looks neon and translucent. The environmental challenges are numerous, as you might imagine. But it is so, so beautiful:
