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Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Sunday, December 26, 2021

12-26-2021 - Covid19 and Some Political Thoughts

 


I’m Just as Confused over Covid19 as Everyone Else, but IMHO:

The best way for those without symptoms to deal with the spreading variants of the coronavirus is to behave as if they had tested positive for them even though they weren’t tested!  Simple, inexpensive home testing would make life, and survival, easier for us all.  And that is what President Biden advocates.

Eventually, almost everyone will at some time or other, test positive, as the virus spreads among us all, not necessarily with symptoms, among the unvaccinated and to a lesser extent, among the vaccinated.  The fact is that vaccinations do wear off.  How quickly, we do not know yet.  But it appears that those vaccinations significantly reduce the number of infections resulting in hospitalization or death.

While behaving as if one tests positive doesn’t mean going into an actual quarantine, as a real, not a theoretical, positive test result would usually call for until a subsequent test is negative, it does mean using masks and avoidance of crowded public places as much as possible.  And of course, vaccination plus booster shots are a given. Such a spread is like a double-edged sword: It suggests an eventual herd immunity effect reducing infections while at the same time increasing the number of those infected, a few of whom will be seriously sickened. 

Almost as great a hazard to public health as the virus itself presents is the obstinancy of those who debunk the remedies and the protocols science and medicine have developed to fight it.  Their position is based on "bad science."  Unfortunately, the Republican Party recognizes that these people form a significant voting bloc and identifies with them in many parts of the country.  Many unnecessary deaths will result from this and Covid19 will persist for far longer than it otherwise would because of them.  Anyone who votes Republican is an ally of the virus, knowingly or not!


JL

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Political Commentary: Don’t Trust Manchin – Also, Boebert and Cawthorn and the Rest of that Vile Crew

Senator Manchin’s withdrawal from supporting the “social infrastructure” portion of President Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, support that might have enabled its passage, should not blind voters to the fact that not one of the fifty Republican Senators supported the legislation which, among other things, would have strengthened the expiring Child Care Tax credit.  Not one of them.  They’re all “no good.” 

And West Virginians are among the top recipients of that benefit.  Manchin had implied earlier that some of them might use the money to “go hunting during deer season” or buy drugs. Tell that to the wife of an unemployed coal miner with four kids working nights as a waitress to make ends meet.  Don’t expect Manchin to ultimately swing around.  He has played that game before and is not to be trusted.

The millions of poverty level parents whom this will penalize must be mobilzed to defeat Republican candidates at all levels on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022.  Face it: Republicans are against “government for the people,” something their Party, contrary to the words of Lincoln, would like to see “perish from this earth.” 

They think “government for the people” is socialism.  Too many Republican voters are either ignorant, gullible or stupid enough (take your choice) to actually believe such crap. Here are two quotes from the Nazis, oops, I mean Republicans, in Congress:

At a recent gathering of young fascists, oops again, I mean conservatives (Turning Point USA), Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said: “I am tired of having Godless people who hate America run this country! You and I are going to take this country back!” Representative Madison Cawthorn (R-NC) told the audience of college students that they should drop out of school. “I think you should home school. I was home schooled all the way through. I am proudly a college dropout. Unless you are becoming a doctor or lawyer or engineer, I highly encourage you to drop out.”  These two pieces of crap would have been among those who forced Socrates to drink the hemlock.  (You might have to explain to Cawthorn who Socrates was.) Think about the kind of people who vote them into office. These fellow citizens of ours are just as bad as they are.

I know some Republicans don’t really believe this crap but go along with it anyway. They don’t deserve a pass.  They are equally guilty.

JL

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They Just Might Get Away With It, So Register and Vote!

Do Americans realize that if the Republicans win the House in a bit more than ten months, the House’s January 6  investigation will disappear?   Bannon, Meadows, Clark, Perry, Flynn, the former president, etc. will walk away smelling like roses, vindicated by an electorate whose Congressional votes on Nov. 8 will have validated their ignorance, gullibility or stupidity (take your choice) by believing the “big lie” and that the mob that attacked the Capitol were just enthusiastic tourists?  

 JL

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Lifetime Tenure in Congress?

I made the following comment on the Washington Post’s website where Dana Milbank’s Dec. 23 column appeared, discussing how the Republicans, by controlling elections and gerrymandering at the State level, are turning many of their Congressional Representatives into lifetime officeholders: 

“In my opinion, unless the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and the For the People Act are passed and put into effect within the next month or two, the Republicans will control Congress starting on Election Day, Nov. 8, 2022.  They also will also increase their control of State legislatures, whose role in the election process is making this tragedy likely to take place just a bit more than ten months from now.  Speaker McCarthy (!) and Senate leader McConnell (!) will quickly lead repeal of whatever parts of President Biden's agenda have passed, and we can say goodbye to any further investigation of the January 6 insurrection.  The rioters will end up as heroic patriots demonstrating against a "stolen election."  Gerrymandering will continue and the economic and social successes already passed by Congress will disappear.  I don't know how a sense of extreme urgency can be imparted to Democratic leadership, but unless they have something magical up their sleeve, their goose is cooked.  And they don't even smell the aroma coming from the oven!  They must pass Voting Rights legislation NOW, while they have bare Congressional majorities or all is lost for the next half century.”  

Carving out a filibuster exception for voting rights legislation will be necessary to get something done. 

JL

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Having Your Cake and Eating It

Here’s a quote from Heather Cox Richardson’s ‘Letters from an American’ on Wednesday, 12/22:  

“It appears that the circle closest to Trump is not going to try to deny involvement in the attempt to overturn the election, but rather is challenging Congress’s authority to ask about their actions. This is an extraordinary position to take: they are declaring that they are not bound by our laws (although they are apparently eager to try to use them to reduce their exposure.)"

That’s known as “having your cake (protection of our laws) and eating it (committing acts of insurrection against those laws).”

 JL

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