Year: 2021
Schatz: Debt Ceiling Will ‘Resolve Itself’
“I am predicting, with absolute certainty, it will resolve itself uneventfully. Because it always does.”
— Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), quoted by Politico, on the debt ceiling standoff.
Mr. Malpractice
Floridians, Dr. DeSantis doesn’t really care about ya,
He says, Don’t let that bad coronavirus bug scare ya!
And when it comes to masks,
Don’t even bother to ask —
Dr. DeSantis says COVID-19 is caused by too much “media hysteria.”
Tucker Carlson Resorts to Fascist Propaganda on Fox
Baltimore Sun opinion writer: “If not the theme of [Fox News fascist propagandist Tucker] Carlson’s week of broadcasts from Hungary, then the leitmotif was: Look at what a ‘happy’ and ‘orderly’ country Hungary is under Mr. Orbán, as opposed to the chaos and darkness of American life under Mr. Biden. We need someone like Mr. Orbán to lead America out of that darkness. And who would that someone be but Mr. Trump, who was described as a ‘great friend of Hungary’ by the Hungarian leader in an interview with Mr. Carlson last week.”
DeSantis’ Approval Rating Down 11 Points Due to Covid Negligence
44%
Florida’s Trumpian Gov. Ron DeSantis’ approval rating has dropped 11 percentage points since May. A new St. Pete Poll finds his approval/disapproval at 44 percent/49 percent. The approval number was 55/40 in a Florida Chamber of Commerce poll in May.
Newsom: GOP Candidate Larry Elder Will Repeal Popular Laws
LA Times: “Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday attacked the Republican topping the field of candidates trying to replace him in the September recall election, calling conservative talk show host Larry Elder a climate change denier who would restrict abortion rights and end the minimum wage if elected. Newsom’s broadside against his opponent comes just a week after a poll showed that likely California voters are almost evenly split over ousting the governor in the Sept. 14 recall election, and showing that Elder leads the pack among the candidates in the race.”
Fact Check: Republicans Attempt to ‘Benghazi’ Pelosi over Jan. 6 Capitol Security
The Republicans’ use of the terrorist attack on the 2012 US consulate in Benghazi as a political cudgel is a classic example of the power of their dark arts. Their objective was to weaken then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom they perceived as a formidable future presidential candidate. Ignoring the fact that secretaries of state have no command authority over troops or their deployment, the investigated her role in the security failure at the US Benghazi diplomatic outpost ten times, six of which were conducted by GOP-led committees.
Using carefully constructed slander, congressional Republicans created a fictionalized version of the attack, one in which Secretary Clinton was responsible for the deaths of US security personnel as well as her friend, US Ambassador Christopher Stevens. Compounded with dozens of similar attacks on Clinton during her 30-year career in public service, the facts-free insinuations worked. Her approval rating, once in the mid-60s, began to drop. She “lost” the 2016 presidential campaign despite a 3 million vote advantage in the popular race.
ACA Medicaid Expansion Cuts Medical Debt Nearly in Half
Vox.com: “Medicaid expansion doesn’t just provide more people health insurance — it appears to cut medical debt enormously, a new study has found. The Affordable Care Act offered states a huge infusion of federal money to expand Medicaid eligibility to low-income adults, and about 30 states took that deal right away in 2014. Since then, new medical debt in those states has fallen 44 percent, a dramatically bigger drop than was seen in the states that refused to expand the program over the same period. Those states showed only a 10 percent decline.”
Missouri Doctor: Locals Getting Vaccinated in Secret to Avoid Harassment
CNN: “The Covid-19 vaccine has become so polarizing that some people in Missouri are getting inoculated in secret for fear of backlash from their friends and family who oppose vaccination, a doctor told CNN on Wednesday.
“‘They’ve had some experience that’s sort of changed their mind from the viewpoint of those in their family, those in their friendship circles or their work circles. And they came to their own decision that they wanted to get a vaccine,’ said Dr. Priscilla Frase, a hospitalist and chief medical information officer at Ozarks Healthcare in West Plains, Missouri. ‘They did their own research on it, and they talked to people and made the decisions themselves,’ Frase told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. ‘But even though they were able to make that decision themselves, they didn’t want to have to deal with the peer pressure or the outbursts from other people about them … ‘giving in to everything.'”
