Republican vaccine myths obviously choose to accept death rather than science

Pandemic hysteria! Ani-vax paranoia!

Echo opinion by Jonah Goldberg, published in The Baltimore Sun.

#SIASD

On a recent flight from Texas to North Carolina, a woman came so unglued that she tried to open the airplane’s door. 

Unbelievable! The flight crew had to bind and gag her with duct tape. This was an extreme example of a disturbing trend in air travel: People are becoming unruly or even hysterical.

I think this phenomenon is attributable to the mental health toll of the pandemic. And it’s not just affecting air travel. 

In fact, it’s contributing to spikes in road rage, crime and crazy politics. Which brings me to the reaction to President Biden’s comments last week. He explained that we’ve moved out of the wholesale approach to vaccination — mass vaccination centers — and must try retail.

“Now we need to go to community by community, neighborhood by neighborhood, and oftentimes, door to door — literally knocking on doors — to get help to the remaining people,” Mr. Biden said.

This triggered a geyser of paranoia and asininity (aka, meaning "assholeitis"!) from much of the right. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said this amounted to “illegal” intrusions into American privacy. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) called it a “gross abuse of power,” adding: “Nowhere in the Constitution does it say, ‘The federal government shall go door to door pushing Americans into vaccine trials.”

Even after the White House explained that federal workers would not be enlisted for this effort, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) warned that this could lay the groundwork to “go door to door and take your guns. They could go door-to-door and take your Bibles.” 

Now that would be unconstitutional. Another horrid example of Stupid Is As Stupid Does, or #SIASD!)

"Two things are infinite in the universe and human stupidity- and I'm not sure about the universe," Einstein.

But, going to extraordinary lengths to fight a pandemic isn’t. 

In 1796, Congress passed “An Act Relative to Quarantine,” authorizing the president “to direct the revenue-officers and the officers commanding forts ... to aid in the execution of quarantine and in the execution of the health laws of the states.”

The president was George Washington, a man with some passing knowledge of the Constitution.

But you don’t have to go back centuries to understand that federal action is neither illegal nor unconstitutional. Helping localities promote vaccination was part of the March COVID relief package, and such efforts have been underway since April.

Besides, what’s wrong with going door to door to inform people where, how and why they should get vaccinated?

People go door to door all the time. The Census Bureau does it (and that is in the Constitution). Political campaigns do it, as do churches, charities and activist groups. Supporting local efforts to promote vaccination is a perfectly reasonable response to an ongoing pandemic (with new strains popping up) that has cost America more than 600,000 lives and trillions of dollars.

You can just say, “Not interested.”

I’m not arguing for the feds to knock on doors to promote getting vaccinated — especially now that the right has primed people to be outraged by it. But the hysteria is embarrassing.

It’s also bewildering. When Former Guy (aka #tfg) Trump was president, Operation Warp Speed was an own-the-libs triumph. 

On Nov. 20, Laura Ingraham of Fox News said: “The stunning success of President Trump’s Operation Warp Speed caught team apocalypse totally off guard. Don’t you love it?”

Now, Ingraham and many other right-wing media figures are engaged in fearmongering over the alleged dangers of a vaccine we wouldn’t have were it not for #tfg Trump.

At last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (C-PAC junk pack!) in Dallas, professional gadfly Alex Berenson said the Biden administration was “hoping they could sort of sucker 90% of the population into getting vaccinated, and it isn’t happening” — and the crowd cheered. (OMG! Kill off their own kind?)

At a time when COVID-19 is spiking among the unvaccinated and 99.5 percent of COVID deaths are among this group, this is depraved. It’s certainly not pro-life.

But as bad as all this is, it would be a mistake to think this is purely a right-wing problem. When #tfg Trump was in office, anti-vax sentiment was high among Democrats, including then-Sen. Kamala Harris and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. 

Mr. Biden himself raised doubts about a Trump vaccine in a debate. Mr. Trump shot back: “You don’t trust Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer?”

After President Biden won, vaccine paranoia became largely a right-wing phenomenon (which Mr. Trump, who is vaccinated, refuses to push back on). Of course, there’s plenty of other paranoia and hysteria on the left these days, including about the alleged resurgence of Jim Crow. But at least that paranoia isn’t getting people killed.

For the anti-vaccine right, it’s as if President Biden were the pilot of a plane and they would rather open the door and bail midflight if the alternative is being a “sucker” by landing safely.

Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast.

November 2020 election is long past so the Big Lie must end!

Echo opinion letter published in Kingman Miner, an Arizona newspaper: 

The 2020 election has been over since November, but still too many Republicans believe, flamed by #FormerGuy Trump’s continued false and unproven claims, that it was stolen from him.

There are other Republicans who have integrity, like Rep. Liz Cheney, who are being blasted because they know it’s a Big Lie, as it’s now being referred to, because the claim is just that, a Big Lie.

For the most part, the other Republicans without the same integrity due to their fear of losing their jobs continue to back #FormerGuy Trump’s unfounded false claims, regardless of how they truly believe, thus showing no regard to the people and our country, a nation they supposedly work for. Therefore, they are doing a great disservice to this great country of ours. Others, are just cowardly, hiding in the shadows, and keeping out of sight and keeping their mouths shut in fear of the same.

Stupid Is As Stupid Does! #SIASD

This continued claim of a fraudulent election is doing absolutely no good to help heal and bring this country back together, as it should be. It is long past time that we put what’s in the past in the past and move on.

From Tom Ciardullo, Golden Valley Arizona

Donald Trump's stupidity continues because he has no expert advisers

Donald Trump Stumped By Terms ‘Busing’ And Western ‘Liberalism’ At News Conference- Huffington Post report by Mary Papenfuss

The president says busing is “certainly a primary method of getting people to schools,” and blows off any mention of desegregation.

In comments in Japan on Saturday, Donald Trump appeared to be confounded by the terms school “busing,” as well as Western-style democratic “liberalism”.

Asked at a news conference as the G-20 summit wrapped up, about Putin’s attack on the principles that guide the world’s democracies, Trump apparently interpreted the Russian leader’s comments as criticism of “liberals” and he started to rant about California — Los Angeles and San Francisco in particular.

Trump also talked around two questions about the busing of children to help achieve racial integration in the U.S. He seemed to think the queries concerned what he referred to as the “primary method of getting people to schools.” He failed to address the issue of busing children to other districts that began in the 1970s to desegregate American classrooms and that sparked major local controversies.

NBC News’ Kristen Welker asked if he believed busing was a “viable way of integrating schools.”

The busing issue had been spotlighted by a heated disagreement back-and-forth between former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris of California at Thursday’s debate among 10 Democratic presidential hopefuls. As a senator from Delaware, Biden opposed federally mandated busing while Harris pointed out that she was a beneficiary of busing as a child.

Asked to comment on that disagreement, Trump responded with a mysterious reference to a “certain policy” that “I will tell you in about four weeks.”

It’s “going to be very interesting and very surprising, I think, to a lot of people,” he added. He offered no other details.

Putin has disparaged Western democratic values such as multiculturalism and social tolerance in an interview with The Financial Times, saying these tenets were no longer accepted by most people, and had “outlived their purpose.” He also attacked gender nonconformity. And he praised Trump for responding to voters who reject those values.

Trump apparently thought Putin was talking about California Democrats. 

Putin “sees what’s going on — I guess if you look at what’s happening in Los Angeles, where it’s so sad to look, and what’s happening in San Francisco and a couple of other cities, which are run by an extraordinary group of liberal people,” he said at his news conference. “I don’t know what they’re thinking.”“Well, it has been something that they’ve done for a long period of time,” Trump vaguely responded. “I mean, you know, there aren’t that many ways you’re going to get people to schools. So this is something that’s been done ... it is certainly a primary method of getting people to schools.”

Lawyer George Conway, an often harsh critic of Trump despite being the husband of senior White House adviser Kellyanne Conway, called his answers “completely bizarre,” and wondered if the president was “breathtakingly ignorant” or if his comments were a sign of “cognitive decline.”

The Washington Post headlined that Trump’s “apparent ignorance of basic political terms” was on display overseas.

(Even!)....British politician Boris Johnson, a frequent Trump ally who may become the U.K.’s next prime minister, called Putin “totally wrong ” in his assessment. “Our values, freedom and democracy, the rule of law, free speech, those things are imperishable and they will succeed,” he said.

The outgoing prime minister, Theresa May, responded with a statement saying that the U.K. “would continue to unequivocally defend liberal democracy and protect the human rights and equality of all groups, including LGBT people.”

Maine Writer- In my opinion:  Donald Trump has zero understanding about how the US Constitution holds us accountable to certain unalienable rights.  SIASD

Donald Trump needs to grow up! He fires experts and anybody who disagrees with him and, therefore, as a result, his stupidity continues.

Donald Trump missed opportunity with the Central Intelligence Agency

Opinion letter echo*:

Former US Intelligence Chief John Brennan was outraged about Donald Trump's acquiescence to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki on July 16, 2018, when he verbally deferred to Putin's denial of the 2016 election interference. 

When Trump said he couldn't see any reason why Russia "would" have been involved in the U.S. presidential election, what he said he meant to say was "wouldn't." 

"I said the word 'would' instead of 'wouldn't,'" Trump explained, speaking at the White House more than 24 hours after his news conference with Putin began drawing fire from allies and critics alike. "The sentence should have been, 'I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be Russia.'" (MaineWriter opinon ~ OMG! SIASD**)

A Time For Reckoning in The Washington Daily News

https://www.thewashingtondailynews.com/2018/07/17/time-for-a-reckoning/
To the editor of the The Washington Daily News:
Trump sided with Vladimir Putin!~ (He's a failed US leader)

https://www.cnn.com/2018/07/16/politics/donald-trump-putin-helsinki-summit/index.html

On July 16, 2018, the President of the United States Donald Trump said in clear terms that he believes our arch-enemy, Russia (in the dictatorial form of Vladimir Putin), more than he believes the intelligence community, of his own country.

If you cannot accept that as fact, then please do not bother reading further. There is no question that Russia tried to manipulate the 2016 elections. Forget for a moment who they were trying to get elected but just ponder this fact — a foreign country tried to disrupt our elections. If that does not bother you then please not bother reading further. 

There are many thousands of individuals who have dedicated their lives to the critical task of keeping us safe from foreign invasion or interference. When #45 had a chance to honor those heroes on January 21, 2017, he chose to talk about his electoral college victory while standing in front of stars which represent CIA agents who gave their lives keeping us safe from foreign invasion or interference.

This clearly illustrates Trump’s disrespect for the CIA and his lack of understanding of its value or the personal effort of its agents on our behalf. So, whose assessments does he value, Russia’s or the USA’s? The United States Congress was faced with a decision whether to formally sanction Russia for its primary role in interfering with the 2016 election. In a rare show of bipartisan patriotism, the United States Senate voted on July 22, 2017, 98-2 for sanctions against Russia, and the House voted 419-3 for sanctions. This meant that Republican, Democrat, Independent and Libertarian legislators, believed the intelligence agencies and demanded that Russia be sanctioned. Trump responded by single-handedly dictating that no sanctions would be levied against Russia. If you do not believe these facts, then please do not bother reading further. In a rare political slip by Putin (a press conference on July 16, 2018) he was asked if during the USA presidential campaign he favored one candidate over the other. Putin replied that he wanted Trump to win. If you do not accept this as fact then please do not bother reading further. 

We have no idea why Trump is being manipulated by Putin (perhaps it is in Trump’s tax information which he will not disclose) but Russian manipulation of Trump happened and it will continue to happen unless the Republicans, Democrats and all other patriots of this country take a hard look at the facts and decide that this country is worth saving by removing Trump from office now. 

If you are not one of those patriots then please do not bother reading further. 

From Peter A. Farrell, Washington, Former Captain, United States Army

*Donald Trump certainly missed an opportunity to put the brave people at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) at ease when he spoke in January 2017.  Instead, Trump was ignorant of being mindful of the moment he had at that time  Moreover, he put the proverbial "acid in the wounds" when he did not stand up to Vladimir Putin on July 16, 2018, in Helsinki.  

**SIASD~ "Stupid Is As Stupid Does"