Month: August 2021

 I’m not rich but I paid my house off. And at that point, I was like, “You know, I don’t give a shit. I’m just going to say what I think.” And I mean it.

Uhm:

Carlson was born Tucker McNear Carlson in the Mission District of San Francisco, California, on May 16, 1969. He is the elder son of artist and San Francisco native Lisa McNear (née Lombardi) (1945–2011) and Dick Carlson (1941–), a former “gonzo reporter” who became the director of the Voice of America, president of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the U.S. ambassador to the Seychelles.Carlson’s brother, Buckley Peck Carlson, later Buckley Swanson Peck Carlson, is nearly two years younger and has worked as a communications manager and Republican political operative.

When Carlson was in first grade, his father moved Tucker and his brother to the La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, and raised them there. Carlson attended La Jolla Country Day School and grew up in a home overlooking the La Jolla Beach and Tennis Club. His father owned property in Nevada, Vermont, and islands in Maine and Nova Scotia. In 1984, his father unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Republican Mayor Roger Hedgecock in the San Diego mayoral race.

In 1979, Carlson’s father married divorcée Patricia Caroline Swanson, an heiress to Swanson Enterprises, daughter of Gilbert Carl Swanson, and niece of Senator J. William Fulbright. Though Patricia remained a beneficiary of the family fortune, the Swansons had sold the brand to the Campbell Soup Company in 1955 and did not own it by the time of Carlson’s father’s marriage.

Carlson was briefly enrolled at Collège du Léman, a boarding school in Switzerland, but says he was “kicked out”. He attained his secondary education at St. George’s School, a boarding school in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he started dating his future wife, Susan Andrews, the headmaster’s daughter. He then went to Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, graduating in 1991 with a BA in history.

Fox pays Carlson $10 million a year.

Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy, has been holding a “Cyber Symposium” to prove that the election was stolen. It’s not going well:

As Mike Lindell talks about his “evidence” on day two, the crowd wasn't having it and has mostly left. pic.twitter.com/8sG8CX3Old

— Zachary Petrizzo (@ZTPetrizzo) August 12, 2021

Oops:

The cyber expert on the “red team” hired by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell now says the key data underpinning the theory that China hacked the 2020 election unveiled at the Cyber Symposium is illegitimate.

Mr. Lindell said he had 37 terabytes of “irrefutable” evidence that hackers, who he said were backed by China, broke into election systems and switched votes in favor of President Biden. The proof, he said, is visible in intercepted network data or “packet captures” that were collected by hackers and could be unencrypted to reveal that a cyberattack occurred and that votes were switched.

But cyber expert Josh Merritt, who is on the team hired by Mr. Lindell to interrogate the data for the symposium, told The Washington Times that packet captures are unrecoverable in the data and that the data, as provided, cannot prove a cyber incursion by China.

“So our team said, we’re not going to say that this is legitimate if we don’t have confidence in the information,” Mr. Merritt said on Wednesday, the second day of the symposium.

Mr. Merritt’s break from Mr. Lindell accelerated the unraveling of the MyPillow millionaire’s months of spinning of a conspiracy theory that he said would reverse the outcome of the 2020 election and restore former President Donald Trump to the White House.

He’s a pathetic Trump cultist, taken in by the con like so many others. If they weren’t so cruel and mean you’d almost feel sorry for them.

Two posts consider how Build Back Better will play out in the House now that the Senate has advanced its infrastructure bill.

Slate’s Jim Newell writes:

It was quite a victory for the moderates. But the smoke from the bipartisan fireworks had barely dissipated before Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chairman of the Budget Committee, was on the floor getting revved up about the next item of business, which he’s argued “will go further to improve the lives of working people than any legislation since the 1930s.” This $3.5 trillion bill of progressives’ dreams, which will cover climate change, universal pre-k, child care, expanding Medicare, the child tax credit, Obamacare, giving undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship, taxing the rich, taking on prescription drug companies, and much more—this is the stuff progressives have been waiting to sink their teeth into, and getting the chance to do so is why they agreed to pass the moderates’ little infrastructure deal.

But now the question stands: After reluctantly holding hands with the moderates all summer, will progressives actually get to own the fall?

As attendees told Politico, Sanders told Senate Democrats in a caucus meeting, “We’re with you on this bipartisan bill, so you better be with us on our $3.5 trillion spending package.” But first that message will have to get to House moderates.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Newell writes:

… has sided with the progressives so far, saying that she won’t bring the bipartisan bill to a House vote until Senate Democrats also send over their reconciliation bill. This is not a case of Pelosi, in her words, “freelancing,” or issuing an edict based on how she felt waking up one day. It’s a case of the best vote-counter in Congress counting votes, and progressives having more.

That vote count went public Tuesday in the form of a good ol’ fashioned letter-off between House moderates and progressives. In one letter to Pelosi, nine House moderates called for an immediate vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and expressed “concerns” about the price tag of the looming partisan bill. The Progressive Caucus, however, responded with a letter of its own to Pelosi and Schumer. It conducted a survey of its 96 members asking if they would commit to withholding their votes on the bipartisan deal “until the Senate has passed budget reconciliation legislation deemed acceptable by the Congressional Progressive Caucus.” A “majority” of those members, according to letter-writing Reps. Pramila Jayapal, Katie Porter, and Ilhan Omar, affirmed that they would. A majority of 96 is a bigger number than nine, and those nine aren’t even spelling out consequences if they’re ignored.

Even if it’s progressives’ turn, though, it’s never quite their turn, is it? With moderates, for whom compromise is a virtue in and of itself, there is no real cap on what’s achievable. There’s always more compromise to be had. For progressives, the cap is discrete: Whatever the senior senators from West Virginia and Arizona can live with, because theirs are the votes the progressives’ need.

But those Senate Democrats get none of what infrastructure they want if House progressives hold fast. In theory. And House moderates haven’t the votes to hold them back, either.

Stephanie Kelton, former Chief Economist for the Democratic Minority Staff of the Senate Budget Committee (under Sanders) responded to House moderates via her substack. Their concerns that overspending would leave the country unprepared to address another pandemic wave sound “an awful lot like what former Treasury Secretaries Jack Lew and Larry Summers said in the run-up to passage of the Trump tax cuts back in 2017.”

Kelton continues:

Obviously, both men were wrong. The TCJA passed, adding an estimated $1.9 trillion to fiscal deficits over the next decade. Two years later, when COVID hit, Congress had no difficulty passing a slew of multi-trillion dollar spending bills. Not only did they have plenty of firepower to respond, they did it without raising taxes to “pay for” it. Oh, and last month, lawmakers voted to add $25 billion to the defense budget, boosting the annual appropriation to $778 billion.

As a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), Kelton reminds readers that states that issue their own sovereign currencies don’t operate like the kitchen-table economics routinely hailed in stump speeches. (I won’t go into that theory here. Try this or What Is Modern Monetary Theory.) That’s not the only way we need to rethink how government spends, Kelton offers:

It’s why ‘infrastructure week’ has been a running joke for years, why we experience a water main break every two minutes, why forty-three percent of public roadways are in poor or mediocre condition, and why more than 46,000 of our nation’s bridges are considered “structurally deficient.” We need to stop thinking of infrastructure—physical and human—as something that should receive robust federal-funding only “once-in-a-century.” It puts too much pressure on Congress to try to cram in as much as possible all at once, and it fosters a kind of one-and-done mentality that can be used to justify future inaction.

The only real limit to spending is inflation once we reach full employment:

For the record, I don’t share that concern. We are still digging out of a very deep hole. There is still substantial unused capacity in the system. There are headwinds looming (Delta variant, expiring UI, etc.). And much of the headline inflation we’ve been experiencing can be traced to supply-chain disruptions, industry-specific bottlenecks, and other idiosyncratic pressures related to the reopening.

Those pressures could be with us for some time to come, but experts have concluded that Congress could enact both the bipartisan infrastructure bill and the proposed $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill without exacerbating inflation. Indeed, a much-touted analysis from Moody’s Analytics casts doubt on the House members’ inflation concerns, noting “Worries that the plan will ignite undesirably high inflation and an overheating economy are overdone,” adding that passing the full Biden agenda would add just enough fiscal support “to get the economy back to full employment.” But that’s not all. Moody’s also found that spending more could actually mitigate inflationary pressures over time.

But deficit hawks such as moderates Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are like the poor Jesus said would be with us always. Like now, as Newell reports:

Sinema has already straightforwardly said that she will not vote for a bill that costs $3.5 trillion. Manchin, in a statement after the budget vote Wednesday, explained that he had “serious concerns about the grave consequences facing West Virginians and every American family if Congress decides to spend another $3.5 trillion.”

Unless I missed it, neither has itemized their objections to the American Jobs Plan. They signal that they may have the guts to vote against the price tag. Do they have the guts to publicly announce what they’d like cut?

They held up their end of the bargain to this point. Now, if they want to see their infrastructure plan passed into law, they’ll get a chance to see how they like their legislation held hostage. By House progressives.

The Jan. 6th Trump insurrection has not abated but mutated like the coronavirus. It is popping up in skirmishes around the country, particularly in the South. Where else?

Federal occupation troops left the South a dozen years after the Civil War ended. But before then, Southerners beaten and humiliated at having to share political power with former slaves, staged an orchestrated reign of terror and mob violence intended to restore, if not slavery, white hegemony. Reconstruction would be undone by Redemption. The South lost the war but won the peace. Jim Crow would last one hundred years.

Perhaps Jan. 6th was not the beginning of the second civil war of which The Three Percenters, The Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and have others long dreamt. Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 launched their war to make America “Great Again” after the eight years of the Obama administration. Jan. 6, 2021 was their Gettysburg. Jan. 20th was their Appomattox.

Beaten and humiliated again, now comes the Confederates’ second attempt at Redemption.

Redemption 2.0 manifests as proxy fights over vaccination, and in resistance to mask mandates in schools at loud, angry protests at school board meetings. In North Carolina. In Tennessee. Even as the Delta variant of the coronavirus fills hospitals to overflowing not just with adults, but now with children.

https://twitter.com/formvscontent/status/1425329439420866563?s=20

Eric Boehlert tweets of the mask protests, “once again it’s only parents protesting masks required for students … if students cared wouldn’t they show up??”

Charlie Pierce recounts some noteworthy history behind Williamson County, Tenn., where such an angry protest took place this week. The county just south of Nashville is “the wealthiest in the state and one of the 20 wealthiest counties in the country. (Its county seat is Franklin, most notable for being the place where Union General George Thomas smashed a Confederate Army under John Bell Hood to rubble on November 30, 1864.)”

Pierce notes that these protests are not spontaneous but organized in advance. “Their purpose is clear, at least to them.” He adds, “This is how a country going mad sounds.”

As I’ve said, if you had being witness to a mass insanity on your bucket list, you can check it off now.

Politics of the powder keg

Jeff Sharlet (“The Family“), a keen observer of the right, believes insurrectionists are fantasizing about a rematch. On Wednesday, he issued a Tweet thread arguing that trying to appease people staging these pop-up protests will only allow tougher Covid variants to emerge that result in the deaths of “untold numbers of Americans” and more abroad:

I’m for vaccination as mandatory as the law allows and for looking at means within the rule of law to expand that possibility. I’ve been reporting on the Right in books & for national magazines for 20 yrs. I understand how dangerous this position is. 

The risk of legal mandatory vaccination is further rightwing violence and political disintegration. Those who want to “go slow” are praying the center will hold. From my perspective as a journalist covering the Right: It won’t. It *didn’t.* … 

We don’t have to get into silly self-satisfying arguments about the Right’s ignorance or cynicism to understand that appeasement right now is a liberal pipe dream & even a form of narcissism, a refusal to look at the Right as it openly presents itself. 

A little while ago I drove slowly across the country visiting rightwing churches & individuals. What I found confirms a change I’ve been observing for the last 5 yrs: It’s really, truly, not issue-driven. What the Right wants, fundamentally, is a fight….

Which, of course, is a core principle of fascism, albeit in its rapidly mutating, inchoate American form: A longing for redemption through violence. 

So trying to finesse policy differences or even “cultural” differences (read: white supremacy self-aware or not) isn’t noble, or pragmatic; it *misses the point.* The point, of much of the Right now, is conflict for its own sake, a belief that fighting will make them whole again. 

Which is why I’m for making vaccination as mandatory as law will allow. Anything short of that as an attempt to avoid a fight will, I think, actually enflame much of the Right, since they believe they need to fight to be authentic. 

So let’s proceed with trying to save untold numbers of Americans in the short term & trying to stop a vaccine-crushing variant from rising up & spreading globally in the only-slightly-longer term. Let’s do so fully aware of the conflict this effort will engender. 

How bad will the conflict be? The good news, so far, is not as bad as the Right wants us to believe. Consider: much of the armed rightwing base believes falsely that Biden took power by coup. Are they in the streets? No–they’re telegramming, tweeting, watching TV. 

I’ve talked to many militant rightwingers who say “If X happens, it’ll be civil war!” Then X happens. & they move the goal. Don’t get me wrong: this is staggeringly dangerous. But it shouldn’t be paralyzingly so. We need the strongest legal position for vaccines. 

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1425449080323465221?s=20

I don’t know where I stand on mandating vaccinations, but I have no problem with mandating masks.

Stubbornness is next to godliness in certain quarters of the U.S. Most of the time, it has no impact on the wider community. This time, it can get people killed. Lots of people. More than in skirmishes with cosplaying “patriots.” And not just in this country. The fourth Covid wave is becoming deadly. The rest of us are tired and out of patience with the militantly obstreperous, with paramilitary poseurs, and with “leaders” such as Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) and his seemingly genocidal non-response to the spread of Covid in Florida. Their fetish for freedom ends at my nasopharynx.

They want a fight?

They just can ‘t help themselves:

Here’s the video I tried to tweet earlier but wouldn’t go through. A man was being disruptive during the Williamson County Schools meeting and deputies escorted him out. Dozens of enraged anti-mask parents followed. pic.twitter.com/5LXDCJiInW

— Brinley Hineman (@brinleyhineman) August 11, 2021

The parking lot after a school board meeting last night in Franklin, the wealthiest place in Tennessee. Parents harassed medical professionals who had spoken in favor of masks in schools. “We know who you are. You can leave freely, but we will find you.” https://t.co/SzR0uvMeE7

— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) August 11, 2021

Republicans have found a new boogeyman in the battle for the House: the nation’s top public health agency.As Republicans head back to their districts for the August recess, they are hammering the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and seizing on the backlash to new mask and vaccine mandates — part of a GOP-wide effort to use the fears and frustrations of Americans worried about another round of school closures and lockdowns as cudgels against their Democratic opponents.

Those were the dominant themes of a House GOP news conference right before the summer break, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, continued to beat that drum on Tuesday, firing off a new letter to the Capitol physician and saying in a separate statement that President Joe Biden has “threatened a return to lockdowns and government-mandated restrictions for American citizens.”

Meanwhile, “Fire Fauci” — a reference to infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci — has become a new rallying cry on the right, with some campaigns even selling anti-Fauci merchandise. And Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican and doctor, recently went on a tirade against the CDC and brazenly called on the public to defy health protocols.

“Americans no longer trust Dr. Fauci or the CDC. We clearly need new leadership,” said Rep. Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican who’s a member of the hard-line House Freedom Caucus. “Americans should be trusted to provide informed consent for vaccines. Americans should make their own personal decisions about masks. They’re sick of others imposing their will on them.”

Republicans feel like they have a potent political message following an agonizing and exhausting stretch of pandemic life, and are making the case to voters that things would be different if they’re in power. Plus, whacking Biden’s handling of the deadly virus is a way for the GOP to dent an area where the President had received strong marks at the beginning of his presidency.Enter your email to sign up for CNN’s “What Matters” Newsletter.close dialog

“There’s practically no one in America who isn’t tired and frustrated with wearing masks,” said GOP strategist Doug Heye. “For Republicans, they very clearly see something that they can tap into here.”

But turning the CDC into a punching bag — and villainizing scientists — is also an irresponsible and risky strategy, as the Delta variant continues to ravage communities with low vaccination rates and pediatric hospitalizations are on the rise, just as kids return to school. While the GOP is harping on the reemergence of safety measures, it is largely ignoring that the country likely wouldn’t be in this position if it weren’t for some of the anti-vaccine sentiment being pushed by party members.

And that rhetoric has continued to spread inside the GOP: Freshman Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the controversial Georgia Republican, was once again suspended from Twitter on Tuesday for peddling misinformation about the vaccine, while Paul was suspended from YouTube for claiming that masks are ineffective in fighting Covid-19.”If you’re not interested in following the public health guidelines to protect the lives of people in your state, to give parents some comfort as they’re sending their kids to school, then get out of the way and let public officials, let local officials, do their job to keep students safe,” press secretary Jen Psaki said at Tuesday’s White House briefing.

With coronavirus cases back on the rise and just over half of the US population fully vaccinated, fears have started to grow about the potential for new — and even more deadly — variants. As a result, mask mandates have started to return around the country, while a number of governments, schools and businesses have begun to require employees and patrons to get the vaccine.

But the renewed safety protocols have spurred a fierce backlash on the right. Several red states have imposed bans on mask mandates in schools — including GOP Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 presidential contender who threatened to withhold the salaries of school officials who defy his no-mask policy. And in Washington, Republicans from both ends of the Capitol have introduced a stack of bills to prohibit federal vaccine passports, repeal mask mandates and eliminate Fauci’s salary.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday proposed amendments to the Democrats’ budget resolution that would bar schools from mandating vaccines and masks, though the provisions would be nonbinding even if they were adopted, making them purely a messaging exercise.

The GOP’s crusade against masks has gone even further than drafting legislation. Dozens of Republicans recently refused to wear facial coverings on the House floor. And a trio of GOP lawmakers filed a new lawsuit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the chamber’s mask fines — including Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican who has refused to mask up inside the Capitol and recently contracted a breakthrough case of Covid.Republicans have broadly framed the health requirements as infringing on American liberties and freedoms.

They’ve also accused Biden and the CDC of shifting the goalposts, arguing that requiring vaccinated individuals to now wear masks will actually discourage people from getting inoculated against the virus. And the GOP has been quick to highlight what it sees as examples of Democratic hypocrisy when it comes to the rules — including former President Barack Obama’s outdoor birthday bash last weekend.

“The CDC has become a political arm of the administration. It wants to control every element of our life,” McCarthy said at the pre-recess news conference, which was designed to solidify their midterm message and get Republicans on the same page. “We have a President in the White House and Democrats in Congress that are completely oblivious to the frustration the American people are feeling at this moment.”

For their part, Democrats have empathized with the frustrations of many Americans and acknowledged that the guidance has evolved as the data has changed. But they have also said it’s Republicans who bear the responsibility for the country’s inability to stomp out the virus once and for all, which would eliminate the need for mask wearing.

“I just went to an outdoor event that required masks,” Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, tweeted on Tuesday. “Why?! Because those guys in the Radical Republican Party keep spinning vaccine lies and risking all our lives. We are backsliding and there’s a straight line of responsibility to Kevin McCarthy’s GOP.”Public experts, meanwhile, have warned that the anti-CDC messaging coming from the GOP is dangerous.

While Republicans this summer started to shift their tone on encouraging voters to get the vaccine, the party has dug in hard when it comes to opposing mandates for shots and masks.”The impact is terrible. I want freedom too, but I also believe in public health,” Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean at Emory School of Medicine, said on CNN. “I’m particularly offended by Sen. Rand Paul saying that we shouldn’t listen to the CDC. … We have the best public health agency in the world and we are lucky to have CDC working 24/7 to get us over this outbreak.”

Even some in the GOP have pushed back on their party’s resistance to pandemic protocols. That includes Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy, a doctor who represents Louisiana, a state that is being hit particularly hard by the Delta variant.”Whenever politicians mess with public health, usually it doesn’t work out for public health, and ultimately it doesn’t work out for the politician, because public health suffers and the American people want public health,” Cassidy told CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union” on Sunday. “When it comes to local conditions, if my hospital’s full, vaccination rate is low and infection rate is going crazy, we should allow local officials to make those decisions best for their communities.”

They are in the minority. But they are sticking together:

A majority of voters support mandatory coronavirus vaccines and indoor mask-wearing requirements, according to a new Morning Consult/POLITICO poll that shows opposition to the requirements is chiefly limited to Republicans.

The survey also found that about half of all voters blame the new wave of infections that have sent numbers spiking equally on the unvaccinated and on political leaders opposed to mask-wearing and social-distancing mandates. About one-fifth of voters said neither is responsible; 14 percent blamed the unvaccinated solely and another 7 percent targeted the politicians.

Conducted as Covid-19 vaccination rates stalled while cases skyrocket — particularly in GOP-heavy Gulf Coast states — the poll points to a clear partisan split in perceptions of government’s role in managing the pandemic.

According to the poll, more than 8 in 10 Democrats and at least half of independent voters want to require vaccinations for all Americans (except those with medical conditions), for employees who work in their area and for those who go to gyms or entertainment venues. But those requirements are supported by roughly 35 percent of Republicans, who form the largest group of unvaccinated Americans.

When it comes to mask mandates, Republican support inches up a few percentage points, but a majority is still opposed while nearly all Democrats and a majority of independents are in favor.

This is a Republican problem, let’s not pretend otherwise.

If you happen to come across a stranger riding a motorcycle in the next few days, especially if they’re sporting red, white and blue regalia or wearing a MAGA hat, I’d get out the N95 before spending any time in their presence. They could be one of the nearly three quarters of a million people dedicated to spreading a deadly disease all over the country:

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally is all about crowds.

But in August 2021, it’s not just the crowds that have epidemiologists freaking out. It’s who is in them.

Interviews this week suggest many attendees of the days-long death march here are unvaccinated people who, in addition to often refusing masks, are rejecting the best tool there is to curb the raging pandemic.

It’s not exactly shocking that the hundreds of thousands of people packing into a crowded event like this one—led by pandemic skeptics like Gov. Kristi Noem—would be disproportionately composed of the unvaccinated. But experts suggested the event’s wide reach, along with the spiral of the new and unrelenting Delta variant, could spell nationwide disaster.

“Hope’s not a strategy right now. Vaccination is,” Dr. Michael Osterholm, a University of Minnesota professor of public health and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy who advised the Joe Biden transition, told The Daily Beast. “And there will be people who will be infected as a result of this event.

“The question for everybody is, how many?”

For most of the year, the northern Black Hills are thinly populated, with abundant wild areas dotted with a few small towns and cities.

During the summer, tourists flock in.

When the rally roars into the region in early August, the population explodes, as hundreds of thousands of people rush to Sturgis and the surrounding area to ride motorcycles, attend rock concerts, and drink in bars. This year, the estimate was that up to 700,000 people may attend the rally, which officially started Friday and runs through Sunday.Advertisement

All this is happening as the Delta variant of COVID-19 is rapidly spreading across the country, sending thousands of people to hospitals, and many to morgues.Advertisement

But at the rally itself, bikers typically scoff at such warnings. Almost no masks were evident across the region this week.

Sturgis Public Information Officer Christina Steele, who serves as a rally spokeswoman, told The Daily Beast that while the event has been crowded, she doubted it would top the record 750,000 people who came for the 75th anniversary in 2015.

Much more alarming: Steele said she had heard no concerns about COVID-19.

“Only the media,” she said with a laugh. “I only hear about that from media. No one is talking about it.”

Jeff and Julie Johnson of Denver, Colorado, were at the rally for three days and left Sunday night with smiles on their faces. Neither one was vaccinated, but they said they were not concerned either.

“I’ve worked through the whole thing without it,” Jeff, 54, told The Daily Beast.

Carl McCormack, 55, and his buddy Andrew Rick, 54, both of Blackhawk, S.D., a small town just outside of Rapid City, said they took two weeks vacation during the rally each year to ride and party.

“This is our time,” McCormack said.

Neither one is vaccinated, and they were not alone, a testament to the bubble—ideological, but not, as experts might hope, biological—here of those unconcerned with the pandemic.

“No one I know is vaccinated,” Rick said.

I know that some of these people are going to unnecessarily die of COVID and I will feel nothing. They seem to have decided they can’t get it and they are wrong. But there’s nothing we can do about that delusion. But I am horrified for all the people who can’t get vaccinated and the fact that these nihilists are providing their bodies to the virus so it can mutate and spread. But they are going to do it and a lot of people are going to feel the consequences of their stubborn ignorance.

I have often said that Senator Ron Johnson was the dumbest Senator and I think his behavior during the Trump years, especially regarding the pandemic, has proved that. But that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t been very useful to his fellow rich people:

In November 2017, with the administration of President Donald Trump rushing to get a massive tax overhaul through Congress, Sen. Ron Johnson stunned his colleagues by announcing he would vote “no.”

Making the rounds on cable TV, the Wisconsin Republican became the first GOP senator to declare his opposition, spooking Senate leaders who were pushing to quickly pass the tax bill with their thin majority. “If they can pass it without me, let them,” Johnson declared.

Fact-based, independent journalism is needed now more than ever.Donate

Johnson’s demand was simple: In exchange for his vote, the bill must sweeten the tax break for a class of companies that are known as pass-throughs, since profits pass through to their owners. Johnson praised such companies as “engines of innovation.” Behind the scenes, the senator pressed top Treasury Department officials on the issue, emails and the officials’ calendars show.

Within two weeks, Johnson’s ultimatum produced results. Trump personally called the senator to beg for his support, and the bill’s authors fattened the tax cut for these businesses. Johnson flipped to a “yes” and claimed credit for the change. The bill passed.

The Trump administration championed the pass-through provision as tax relief for “small businesses.”

Confidential tax records, however, reveal that Johnson’s last-minute maneuver benefited two families more than almost any others in the country — both worth billions and both among the senator’s biggest donors.

Dick and Liz Uihlein of packaging giant Uline, along with roofing magnate Diane Hendricks, together had contributed around $20 million to groups backing Johnson’s 2016 reelection campaign.

The expanded tax break Johnson muscled through netted them $215 million in deductions in 2018 alone, drastically reducing the income they owed taxes on. At that rate, the cut could deliver more than half a billion in tax savings for Hendricks and the Uihleins over its eight-year life.

But the tax break did more than just give a lucrative, and legal, perk to Johnson’s donors. In the first year after Trump signed the legislation, just 82 ultrawealthy households collectively walked away with more than $1 billion in total savings, an analysis of confidential tax records shows. Republican and Democratic tycoons alike saw their tax bills chopped by tens of millions, among them: media magnate and former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg; the Bechtel family, owners of the engineering firm that bears their name; and the heirs of the late Houston pipeline billionaire Dan Duncan.

Usually the scale of the riches doled out by opaque tax legislation — and the beneficiaries — remain shielded from the public. But ProPublica has obtained a trove of IRS records covering thousands of the wealthiest Americans. The records have enabled reporters this year to explore the diverse menu of options the tax code affords the ultrawealthy to avoid paying taxes.

The drafting of the Trump law offers a unique opportunity to examine how the billionaire class is able to shape the code to its advantage, building in new ways to sidestep taxes.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was the biggest rewrite of the code in decades and arguably the most consequential legislative achievement of the one-term president. Crafted largely in secret by a handful of Trump administration officials and members of Congress, the bill was rushed through the legislative process.

As draft language of the bill made its way through Congress, lawmakers friendly to billionaires and their lobbyists were able to nip and tuck and stretch the bill to accommodate a variety of special groups. The flurry of midnight deals and last-minute insertions of language resulted in a vast redistribution of wealth into the pockets of a select set of families, siphoning away billions in tax revenue from the nation’s coffers. This story is based on lobbying and campaign finance disclosures, Treasury Department emails and calendars obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, and confidential tax records.

For those who benefited from the bill’s modifications, the collective millions spent on campaign donations and lobbying were minuscule compared with locking in years of enormous tax savings.

A spokesperson for the Uihleins declined to comment. Representatives for Hendricks didn’t respond to questions. In response to emailed questions, Johnson did not address whether he had discussed the expanded tax break with Hendricks or the Uihleins. Instead, he wrote in a statement that his advocacy was driven by his belief that the tax code “needs to be simplified and rationalized.”

“My support for ‘pass-through’ entities — that represent over 90% of all businesses — was guided by the necessity to keep them competitive with C-corporations and had nothing to do with any donor or discussions with them,” he wrote.

Pro-Publica has more on this story. It is a stunning expose that shows just how corrupt that grotesque tax bill really was.

In case you were wondering why Mitch McConnell and the 18 other Republicans voted for the infrastructure bill yesterday, it’s really very simple. They believe it will preserve the filibuster. And it’s because they believe Kyrsten Sinema is subject to their flattery:

“I believe this very exercise demonstrates why it’s so important to maintain the 60-vote threshold in the United States Senate,” Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), a leader of the bipartisan group that negotiated the bill, said in an interview on ABC’s “The View” last week.

To fuel that skepticism, McConnell on Tuesday praised Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), another prominent Democratic defender of the filibuster — echoing comments he has made privately to fellow Republican senators, encouraging support for the two Democrats who have publicly resisted the calls for rules changes.

“I never made that argument when we couldn’t get what we want because of the filibuster, because I believe in the institution, and I admire Senator Manchin and Senator Sinema for doing that, as well,” he said…

It’s true that he always mentions Manchin, but it’s Sinema who is bathing in attention for being the architect of this bipartisan bill. McConnell has her number. And he saw the bigger picture.

McConnell believed that by making Sinema a maverick star he could preserve the filibuster at least through 2022 so the Republicans in the states, including hers, can get all those voting restrictions in place. Preventing the Democrats from enacting the rest of Biden’s agenda is a bonus. If they can get Sinema and Manchin to sabotage the budget resolution, it’s just icing on the cake.

The big question is whether or not Schumer and the White House have anticipated all this and have a plan to counter it. Climate change, voting rights and immigration hang in the balance and they are arguably even more important than bridges and broadband.

It’s not as if the Republicans aren’t publicly counting on their new best friends:

After 19 GOP senators boosted a bipartisan infrastructure plan past a filibuster and onto the House, Republicans are yearning for results from their cooperation with Manchin and Sinema’s effort. Namely, they’re hoping to persuade the senior Democratic senators from West Virginia and Arizona to buck their party and shave down the social spending bill by holding out their votes.

Republicans who speak frequently to the duo are realistic about their chances, acknowledging it’s highly unlikely Sinema and Manchin would end up blocking their party’s biggest priorities altogether. But Sinema is publicly uncomfortable with spending $3.5 trillion and Manchin followed Wednesday morning by airing “serious concerns” with the price tag — so the GOP senses an opportunity.

Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), who is close to both senators and is trying not to overtly pressure them, said “each of them is fiscally responsible and are people of courage. And so I hope they will break on this enormous expansion of government.”

“I know, from talking to both of them, there are concerns about the size and about the various tax increases,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.). “Their vote is the whole enchilada. If they want to stop this thing, they can. And I hope they will use that power.”

Keep in mind that if either one of them decide to change parties, the whole game is changed. I suspect McConnell sees that as a real possibility if the rest of the party puts too much pressure on either one of them. And Sinema is the weak link. I think she may believe that Arizona Republicans will reward her if she does it. After all, she moved from being a Green to being a right wing Democrat in the space of just a couple of years. She’s a practiced shape-shifter.

Anti-vaxers are dropping like flies. Here is a handful of some better known ones.

Radio talk show hosts:

 Longtime radio talk-show host Marc Bernier has been hospitalized with COVID-19, according to a top official at WNDB (1150 AM, 93.5 FM).

“I don’t have an update on him at this point, other than he has been hospitalized,” said Mark McKinney, the station’s operations director.

It wasn’t immediately clear on Monday which hospital Bernier had been admitted to, or his condition. 

Bernier, one of Volusia County’s signature voices on politics and local news for three decades, was off the air and at home sick all last week, McKinney said. 

According to McKinney, Bernier went to the doctor on Friday and received his diagnosis. The talk-show host was hospitalized on Saturday, McKinney said.

News of Bernier’s diagnosis comes as Florida this past week reported 22,783 coronavirus cases on Friday — a new daily record, according to the Florida Hospital Association. 

The state also set a weekly case record with 134,506 new cases reported from July 30 to Aug. 6, according to the Florida Department of Health’s weekly update.

The state’s positivity rate jumped to 18.9%, with Volusia, Flagler and St. Johns counties all above 23%. 

The number of eligible Floridians vaccinated ticked up to 63% this week, compared to 61% the week of July 23 to 29, according to the FDOH. That leaves 37% vulnerable to the virus. 

While he did not have specific knowledge of Bernier’s vaccination status, McKinney said that the host has made his anti-vaccination opinions well known on the air. 

“If you’ve listened to his show, you’ve heard him talk about how anti-vaccine he is on the air,” said McKinney.  

Listeners will be advised of Bernier’s diagnosis today during his show’s 3 to 6 p.m. time slot, McKinney said. The syndicated “Sean Hannity Show” will air in Bernier’s time slot until he returns, McKinney said.

“We will be airing announcements several times an hour that  he is recovering from COVID-induced pneumonia and that we hope to have him back on the air soon,” McKinney said. 

Now in his 30th year on WNDB, Bernier’s show has attracted a lengthy list of nationwide guests ranging from leaders on Capitol Hill and the White House to well-known opinion makers. 

The show has yielded Bernier a spot on radio industry trade publication Talker Magazine’s Top 100 most important talk show hosts for the past 14 consecutive years.

In 2009, Bernier joined the staff at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University as moderator and producer of “The President’s Speakers Series,” a program of interviews with public policy experts on foreign and domestic policy.

In 2019, Bernier left Embry-Riddle and now has a speaker series at Daytona State College with a focus on local and regional issues. 

Raised in Rhode Island, Bernier hosted morning radio shows in New England before moving to Florida continue his career in 1990.

Another one:

It’s a “scam-demic,” he said. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading infectious disease expert, is a “power-tripping lying freak,” he said.

Then the tune changed. “Get the vax,” he said.

Now Dick Farrel, a former Newsmax commentator and all-around coronavirus-denying, vaccine-resistant right-wing radio talk show host, is dead of COVID-19 complications at age 65.

As recently as June, he was expounding on the evils of the coronavirus vaccine, urging others not to get it. And true to his word, he opted out as well.

And another one:

Doctors are focusing on treating the lungs of conservative talk radio host Phil Valentine, in what his family has described as a “critical issue.”

Valentine, who hosts a show on Nashville, Tennessee-based radio station SuperTalk 99.7 WTN, was diagnosed with COVID in mid-July.

He hit headlines after his family said he regretted “not being more vehemently ‘Pro-Vaccine'” after publicly expressing skepticism about COVID shots before being hospitalized by the disease.

They said he now plans to “vigorously advocate” for them.

On Monday, fellow SuperTalk 99.7 WTN host Dan Mandis told Phil Valentine’s fans in a Facebook post on his family’s behalf: “They are working on his lungs, that’s the critical issue right now. Other problems will come along but right now the focus is on his lungs. I’m hoping to have another update soon. #PrayForPhil.”

Politicians:

A leader of the Texas Republican Party hopped on Facebook in May to post about a “mask burning” party 900 miles away in Cincinnati.

“I wished I lived in the area!” wrote H Scott Apley.

The month before, Apley responded to what Baltimore’s former health commissioner was heralding as “great news” — clinical trials showed the Pfizer vaccine was effective at fighting the coronavirus, including one of the recent variants, for at least six months.

“You are an absolute enemy of a free people,” he wrote in a Twitter reply.

And on Friday, the 45-year-old Dickinson City Council member republished a Facebook post implying that vaccines don’t work.

Two days later, Apley was admitted to a Galveston hospital with “pneumonia-like symptoms” and tested positive for coronavirus, according to an online fundraising campaign. He was sedated and put on a ventilator.

On Wednesday, he died, members of his county’s party announced on social media.

Patrick McGinnis, chairman of the Galveston County Republican Party, said in a statement that Apley’s death was a “tragedy … magnified by his youth, his young family especially his very young son.”

Activists:

A TRUMP supporter who spread conspiracies against Covid vaccines and mask-wearing, as well as sharing QAnon messages, died on Friday due to complications with the virus.

Linda Zuern, 70, was praised as a “mighty warrior” by friends for her work for conservative causes, adding that she “loved this country.” 

Zuern had been in a coma on a ventilator since June when she had been flown to Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

It is unclear when contracted Covid.

Friends told the Cape Cod Times she fell ill after she returned to the Cape from South Dakota with her mother following the death of her father.

Her mother had also contracted Covid but survived.

Friends told the Times that Zuern had not been vaccinated.

The activist was among the first members of the pro-Trump group the United Cape Patriots and had been a former member of the Bourne, Massachusetts Board of Selectmen.

She had previously voiced her opposition to wearing masks, vaccines, her disbelief in climate change, and insistance that President Joe Biden stole the election from Trump.

As Trump would say: sad!

Putting on my preachin’ suit and poufing my hair. But first, a little warm-up act.

Anand Giridharadas edited his opening monologue to reinforce his warning about the clear and present danger to the republic represented by a “crock-pot coup” already simmering ahead of the 2024 election. “[I]f democracy dies in America, it is unlikely to resemble our mental picture,” Giridharadas explains.

“That death would be, the experts tell us, completely above board. Fully legal, even constitutional. The i’s will be dotted; the t’s will be crossed. The paperwork will be submitted properly and on time, in triplicate.”

https://twitter.com/AnandWrites/status/1424542444536860676?s=20

Giridharadas writes at The Ink:

The various expressions of this slow-simmering coup appear to share a common object: laying the groundwork for states to declare their own election systems to have been contaminated by fraud, and thereby usurping from the people the power to allocate electoral votes.

In short, these states are creating a legal framework to do what former President Trump asked them to do in 2020 — overturn their own elections.

The cynically, tragicomically Orwellian name for these Republican machinations?

Election integrity.

Election. Integrity.

If democracy does ultimately die in America, it will be “election integrity” that did it.

What is the answer to the crock-pot coup?

Urgent, concerted democratic reform.

“To save our democracy, we must democratize it,” the scholars Daniel Ziblatt and Steven Levitsky write. “We must expand access to the ballot, reform our electoral system to ensure that majorities win elections, and weaken or eliminate antiquated institutions such as the filibuster so that majorities can actually govern.”

A radical idea.

Amid the summer of the Delta variant and of those wildfires and of looming evictions and a last-ditch moratorium on those evictions and the possibility that we will, at long last, have our infrastructure week, the crock-pot coup may feel at once less immediate and more daunting.

But perhaps no other ongoing story in this country so deserves our attention.

This you know already. And I’m not doing enough to stop the real steal in the planning. But I’m doing what I can, exploiting electoral angles others have missed, much of it behind the scenes.

I spoke yesterday with an old friend I had not talked to in years. He’s lonely and depressed. He’s watching society crumble in ways he’d predicted for decades. After so long out of touch, he didn’t need me to hear that rant again.

He’s been shamed by the climate activism of Greta Thunberg. So young. So fearless. For years, he seethed but had not acted. He’s fighting despair. She’s fighting global powers. Win or lose.

Sometimes in politics you get run over. But being in the fight means I stopped feeling like road kill decades ago. The antidote to cynicism and despair is stepping back into the fight the way Rick Blaine does at the end of Casablanca. I told him it’s empowering especially when you feel powerless.

Also, the struggle must bring out the Irish in me, I said.

Is this a private fight or can anyone join?