One in Three

Doctors are seeing such cases around the world: About a third of COVID-19 patients go on to develop "long-haul" neurological or psychiatric conditions months after being infected, new research shows.

The findings suggest a link between COVID-19 and a higher risk for later mental health and neurological disorders, researchers report.

The new analysis of data from more than 236,000 COVID-19 survivors focused on 14 neurological and mental health disorders. It found that 34% of patients were diagnosed with such disorders in the six months after infection with the new coronavirus.

It just boggles my mind that there are people still willing to take a risk of contracting Covid.

In part, one has to wonder whether or not we have had a few hundred thousand people die and a million or more contract COVID because some old fat white guy was so vain that he was afraid that wearing a mask would mess up his spray-on tan.

Vaccine availability in this country is near the point where any adult who wants to be immunized should have been immunized. So those, from here on out, who end up in the hospital with COVID and whine that they should have taken precautions or should have gotten vaccinated should be given a Tough-Shit card and the key to the Weep Locker.

WØRD!

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Time to Invest in Pitchforks and Tumbrels?

Once again, we are learning that the rich in this country are parasites: They reap the benefits of being Americans, become wealthy, but they pay nothing approaching their fair share int axes. They pay less of a percentage of their income in taxes than a Wal-Mart worker. In many cases, they pay less taxes than a burger-flipper.

ProPublica has the story.

It's not unusual for the ultra-rich to pay less then a tenth of a percent of their income in taxes. In some years, by their financial shenanigans, they'll make billions of dollars and pay not a penny of taxes.

Let's be clear: This is not a bug in the tax code. This is a feature. The rich have pretty much bought the politicians who enacted the changes to the tax code to make it possible for them to get richer on the backs of the wage-earning schlubs who actually pay taxes and who have little access to the tax breaks that the rich do.

I could snark about the fact that there is an entire political party devoted to fucking over workers and making the rich richer, but it goes beyond that. Two presidental administrations ago, we had an attorney general whose mission in life was to protect the greedheads who crashed the economy in 2008. And he did just that, for other than some low-level scumbags, none of the real bandits spent a minute in a courtroom.

My belief is that a democracy cannot survive when the rich are paying nowhere near their fair share of taxes.

Bezos the Pirate

Do you own an Amazon smart device? If so, odds are good that the company is already sharing your internet connection with your neighbors unless you’ve specifically told it not to.

On Tuesday, the company launched a program that forces users of many Echo smart speakers and Ring security cameras to automatically share a small portion of their home wireless bandwidth with neighbors. The only way to stop it is to turn it off yourself.

Amazon, which is a wealthy company that has made much of their money on the backs of their workers, to the point that "Amazon warehouse" is a modern synonym for "sweatshop", now seeks to make even more money by stealing your bandwidth.

If you have one of their devices, shut that shit off.

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Sad and Delusional

Mike Lindell, founder of My[Fascist]Pillow and funder of the so-called Stop the Steal movement and an array of right-wing media, posted a video on his FrankTV platform Thursday presenting his alleged “evidence” that the Chinese government hijacked the 2020 presidential election by hacking Dominion Voting System machines and other voting machines. Lindell titled the video “Absolutely 9-0,” reflecting his prediction that when his “evidence” gets before the U.S. Supreme Court, it will result in a unanimous decision “to pull this election down.”

The sad thing is that there are tens of millions of people who buy into this insanity.

I have little doubt that the lawyers for those suing Lindell for defamation are dry-washing their hands with glee. His defense team is probably ordering cases of Weller 12 and Johnny Walker Blue and putting it on his tab.

A MR Democrat, Indeed

A key Democratic senator says he will not vote for the largest overhaul of U.S. election law in at least a generation, leaving no plausible path forward for legislation that his party and the White House have portrayed as crucial for protecting access to the ballot.

“Voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen,″ Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia wrote in a home-state newspaper, the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

He wrote that failure to bring together both parties on voting legislation would “risk further dividing and destroying the republic we swore to protect and defend as elected officials.”

Manchin is high on his own supply. Voting legislation was intensely partisan in the 1960s, albeit between the Dixie segregationists refighting the Civil War and those who were committed to civil rights. There is no way that the Trumpist GOP is going to back voting rights. They've openly concluded that their path to power is to make it harder for poor people, working people, city dwellers and minorities to vote. If that doesn't work, they're making it easier to throw out election results if they lose.

That Manchin is immune to that reality is proof positive that he is not playing with a full deck. And,for that matter, neither is Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.

On Its Way to the Supremes

A federal judge has overturned California’s three-decade-old ban on assault weapons, calling it a “failed experiment” that violates people’s constitutional right to bear arms.
U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego ruled on Friday that the state’s definition of illegal military-style rifles unlawfully deprives law-abiding Californians of weapons commonly allowed in most other states and by the U.S. Supreme Court.

This case will end up at the Supreme Court, unless the 9th Circuit sustains the ruling and California declines to appeal in order to avoid having the Supremes rule on it.

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