THE NEW VARIANT – Much Less Important than Owning the Libs

Keep masking in enclosed spaces and in crowds. Avoid A-holes. Enforce vaccine mandates for school, work and travel. If the mandates don't work, at least they will stop many MAGATs from getting vaccinations.
Look, this news on the new variant isn’t ideal. I think we can all agree on that. But it’s also by no means surprising. The COVID-19 virus is going to be here forever. It’s not going to go away, at least not without an additional set of big medical advances. We have to get used to this. That means it is likely to continue mutating. Some of those mutations might be pretty bad! It’s still true that barring the unprecedented elimination of the virus, we are all going to get it at some point or another. The issue is to manage the virus. There are all sorts of problems around this. First is the massive disinformation campaign led by Rupert Murdoch’s global media network and the other rich right-wingers who fund this. Second is the fact that western companies and governments are putting profits ahead of vaccinating the world. We can’t really solve the second entirely without solving the first, but we can do a lot more than we are doing. Unfortunately, these are intractable problems right now.

DL Open Thread Monday November 22nd

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Rob Portman, (LAME DUCK-Ohio), and Chris Coons, (D?-Delaware), introduced bipartisan legislation to combat international wildlife trafficking. Maybe it's a decent bill, maybe not.  Knowing Coons, however, I'm going to go…

It is not ok to be nice to Republicans.

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The Republican party is filled with psychotic racists who hate America and they need to be crushed at every election down to dog catcher. They need to be social pariahs who relearn how to stay in hiding. When Coons continually attempts to rehabilitate the reputation of the Grand Old Party, even as their atrocities are unfolding, he isn't trying to be a good guy. He is propping up psychotic racists for some psychotic reason only he really knows.

Rep. Paul Gosar isn’t really a member of Congress, so Congressional Punishments don’t really matter

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The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to approve a resolution that censures Rep. Paul Gosar for posting a photoshopped anime video showing him murder Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The censure strips him of his two committee assignments. Gosar's response was more or less - "Big Whoop. I'm just here to fuck around and shit post anyway." CNN and others call the more "a major rebuke" but let's face it - Gosar is right abut his tenure. He is a hype-man. He can put his clown show on just as easily without committee assignments. I liked AOC's response:

Biden’s Dilemma

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He ran as the sensible moderate who, even in the age of unbreakable, unreasonable, recalcitrant Republicanism,  could "bring people together."   The unreasonable, recalcitrant Republicans have called bullshit on that plan, so Biden can either renounce this key campaign promise, or make pretend that Susan Collins,  Mitt Romney, Bill Cassidy, Lisa Murkowski,  Shelley Moore Capito attending a White House signing ceremony means that he is "bring people together." I'd be the farm that the Biden braintrust goes with "let's make pretend" as a strategy. And I get it.   Calling out Republicans for what they are and charting a bold, aggressive new course of direct confrontation would be akin to admitting that his political life up until now is a bit of a scam.   You can't blame him for not having the guts to renounce his entire political identity, who could possibly do that? Sure.  That sucks for the country, but there you have it.