When I hear from Buffalo Democratic Mayoral candidate India Walton that "Democrats have gotten very comfortable doing nothing," I'm reminded of all the six-figure consultants who've urged caution and moderation to hundreds of losing candidates all over America, and I'm also reminded that the Democratic hold on power in American cities is also a right-wing complaint, though Republicans surely would run our cities far worse. Hopefully you'll read the article and find Ms. Walton a fairly incisive and eclectic analyst of current events, and you'll think more people like that should be running things. Even Chuck Schumer has gotten on the bandwagon (though he might merely have been trying to outpace Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, for whatever reason).
Kyrsten Sinema loses five members of her Veterans Advisory Council, all of whom slam the Arizona Senator for "answering to big donors rather than your own people," which is exactly how we should frame all discussions of all our representatives in Congress. I'm beyond tired of hearing about how Ms. Sinema's been "up front" with her fellow Senators during Build Back Better negotiations, when she obviously hasn't been up front with the good citizens of Arizona who are her bossese. Naturally she responds to her advisors' resignation by implying they should stick to military matters.
Arkansas hospital decides it'll grant religious exemptions to folks who don't want to take the vaccine -- if they also swear off Tylenol, Sudafed, Benadryl, Tums, and a host of other famous medicines! There's a point in there: folks who shun the vaccine because of its testing on decades-old fetal issue (not cells from last week's abortions, as they claim) must also in good conscience reject the aforementioned medicines because testing on fetal tissue figured in their development as well! Not that today's rage will matter to right-wingers after they get a load of tomorrow's rage.
In a related note, James Colgrove at The Conversation takes us through the history of vaccines and vaccine mandates in America -- and sees today's parents as less accepting of such mandates. A lot has happened in recent years, of course -- Andrew Wheeler and Jenny McCarthy made us all scared we'd have autistic kids if we vaccinated them, and then social media let us all pretend we're celebrities and pundits and its algorithms relentlessly amplified the right-wing content that results in more enragement, er, engagement. And not for nothing, but all these ask-your-doctor-about-this-drug ads on TV -- which didn't exist in the '70s -- are also helping to make people a bit too cocksure about their "knowledge." I think some humility about what you don't know is a good thing, though most Americans don't seem to agree anymore.
When I hear that a couple of pro-Josh Mandel super PACs are running ads appearing to slam fellow Ohio Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance as insufficiently pro-Trump based on what he said in 2016, I'm reminded that these ads could ultimately help Mr. Vance, if Republican voters become convinced over the next six months that Donald Trump is actually an albatross on their fortunes -- or if Republican poobahs merely decide that they've milked Mr. Trump all they can and are ready to move on. I also wonder why anyone, anywhere, let alone a super PAC, would favor Josh Mandel's election to any office. I hear even Donald Trump finds him a bit of a brown-noser.
Finally, dig the chutzpah from Condoleeza Rice, telling us that though January 6 was "wrong" (like that's some big gift to us!), we need to "move on" as a nation. First off, I read her plea ultimately as a thinly-disguised plea to "move on" from all of her sins as a member of the George W. Bush Administration; she can barely show herself in public after all of that, which is how it should be. Second off, I can't shake the feeling that when she says "what's happening to kids in school," she means we're forcing them to wear masks to keep from spreading COVID, which isn't an injury done to them no matter how many right-wing assholes think so.
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