Opinion

DCP Officer Michael Fanone

Greg Sargent - WaPo:

As the despicable GOP whitewashing of the Jan. 6 insurrection continues apace, House Democrats are set to force a vote on the creation of a commission to examine the assault.

If you want to see why this should throw Republicans on the defensive, watch two videos. The first video shows D.C. police officer Michael Fanone angrily telling CNN that this GOP whitewashing is made up of “lies” and “bulls--t,” and that it’s “disgraceful.”

The second video shows Rep. Andrew S. Clyde (R-Ga.) smugly refusing to back down from his widely circulated suggestion that Jan. 6 was akin to a “normal tourist visit.”

In a surprising bit of good news, House Democrats just announced a bipartisan deal on the makeup of the commission to scrutinize the attack. It was negotiated between the Democratic and Republican leaders of the Homeland Security Committee.

Predictably, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) immediately said he hadn’t agreed to the deal. What’s still unclear is how many Republicans will support it. The bill will pass in the Democratic-controlled House, but it will also need GOP support in the Senate, since it could theoretically be filibustered.

What’s in the deal over the commission

Perhaps the most important thing is that it focuses the scope of the commission on “the facts and causes” related to the Jan. 6 attack and to “the interference with the peaceful transfer of power.” It will also look at the “influencing factors” that “fomented” this attack.

Importantly, it describes Jan. 6 as a “domestic terrorist attack” waged against “American representative democracy.” That counters the GOP whitewash effort by framing the mission around the need to explore the deep radicalization that led to an effort to overthrow U.S. democracy itself.

Republicans wanted to obscure this. They wanted the commission to also look at allegedly widespread leftist violence, including protests against police brutality. Their aim was to bury the role of right-wing radicalization in driving us into crisis, and the active efforts by President Donald Trump and Republicans to feed and exploit that radicalization.

They appear to have lost that battle for now. But there are still questions about the makeup. It will have five members appointed by Democratic congressional leaders — including the chair — and five by GOP leaders. No current elected officials are allowed, which keeps away House Republicans who’d sabotage the inquiry.

Still, it’s unclear who Republicans would appoint. Subpoenas require a majority of the commission, or an agreement between the chair and vice chair (picked by Republicans), so Republicans might be able to block uncomfortable subpoenas.

But the chair alone has the power to secure relevant information from federal agencies, and to appoint senior staff, which should give Democrats some real control.

“Thanks to powers invested in the Chairperson alone, the Democratically-appointed members would have significant control over the direction of the investigation,” New York University law professor Ryan Goodman told me, adding that this would help prevent GOP-appointed members from “engaging in mischief.”

“The Chairperson would be able to move ahead quickly with getting information from the government without needing a vote,” Goodman continued, noting that the chair can “appoint staff” who would help “shape how the investigation and hearings unfold.”

Time to put Republicans on defense

The next step is for House Democrats to hold a vote on this right away. This could put Republicans on the defensive.

That’s because, as a senior House GOP lawmaker told Punchbowl News, as many as 20 Republicans might be willing to support it. And if the proposal did pass the House with bipartisan support, Punchbowl reports, a bloc of GOP senators might also support it, scuttling any effort to block it. It’s also possible Senate and House GOP leaders will accept the deal. We’ll see.

The bottom line is this: Broadly speaking, Republicans want to bury some fundamental truths. Many of them actually did go all in with Trump’s effort to overturn the election. They actually did sustain his lies about our political system’s ability to render legitimate democratic outcomes.

That deception campaign actually did help inspire the deadly mob violence. Trump actually did incite that violence for the express purpose of disrupting the peaceful transfer of power.

This is why Republicans such as Clyde are likening Jan. 6 to a “tourist visit.” It’s why other Republicans have said the rioters were “peaceful patriots,” that there’s no proof they were Trump supporters, that the real problem is leftist violence and that Trump didn’t incite them.

When Clyde was pressed by reporters on this Thursday, he smirked and dissembled and regarded his questioners with utter contempt, as if he’s entirely untouchable in his ability to rewrite the history of what we all saw with our own eyes.

‘It’s disgraceful'

Which brings us to Fanone. CNN obtained extraordinary footage from Fanone’s body cam that shows him under assault, screaming in pain and pleading for help. At one point he yelled: “I got kids!”

When Fanone was interviewed by CNN on Thursday night, he was scalding about the GOP efforts to rewrite the history of Jan. 6.

“I don’t expect anybody to give two shits about my opinions,” Fanone said. “But I will say this: Those are lies. And peddling that bullshit is an assault on every officer that fought to defend the Capitol. It’s disgraceful.”

This hints at how a real inquiry could look to the American people. Perhaps Republicans will oppose such an inquiry; perhaps they will not. But right now, the truth is overwhelming the lies. And that’s only going to continue, no matter what Republicans do.

Daddy State Awareness, Rule 5

They change history.

“you didn’t see what you saw"

"what happened isn’t what happened"

“I didn’t say what you heard me say”

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   538,127 (⬆︎ .33%)
New Deaths:      9,890 (⬆︎ .29%)

USA

New Cases:   17,834 (⬆︎ .05%)  🥳 LOWEST IN OVER A YEAR!! 🎉
New Deaths:       289 (⬆︎ .05%)  🥳 LOWEST IN OVER A YEAR!! 🎉

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:           157.5 million (⬆︎ .83%)
Total Eligible Population:    56.2%
Total Population:                 47.4%

and the bad news is:

Vaccination has been more or less universally available in USAmerica Inc for a month, and since then,18,651 Americans have been killed by COVID-19.

At over 600,000 dead Americans, let's be cognizant of the simple fact that not one of those people was vaccinated.

None.

WaPo:

The million-dollar jab and other giveaways reveal a desperate push to vaccinate America

The first incentives were relatively modest: doughnuts, hunting licenses, baseball tickets. And cheeseburgers. Beer. Whiskey. Maybe even a savings bond, enough to buy a nice toaster someday.

The United States has a surplus of coronavirus vaccine doses on its hands, and long gone are the days when people waited hours to get jabbed. Dwindling demand has forced governors and mayors to get creative.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) tried to market the vaccines by offering burgers and fries from Shake Shack, which he dutifully, awkwardly ate on camera while trying to keep a straight face.

Now, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has upped the ante. He’s offering $1 million to five adults, provided they are vaccinated. That’s $1 million each.

They’ll be chosen by lottery once a week, starting May 26. Separately, he’ll hand out full-ride scholarships at a public state university to five vaccinated teenagers.

“There’s something magical about a million dollars,” DeWine said in an interview. “I’ve had people call me up today and say it is a crazy idea. I’ve had people say it’s a great idea.”

What it’s not? A magic wand. Public officials such as DeWine are desperate to crush the coronavirus pandemic and get their economies wide open, but they’re faced with what is known blandly and simplistically as vaccine hesitancy.

Beers, bouquets and free rounds at a gun range: How local governments promote vaccines

In Ohio, DeWine’s million-dollar lure appears to have had mixed success.

At Ohio State University in the capital, Columbus, traffic at vaccination sites was up Thursday, said Crystal Tubbs, associate director in the pharmacy department.

“In the first hour of today’s clinic, we saw six times the volume of patients per hour than we did last night,” Tubbs said. “If you would have asked me a week ago, I would say we were at a decline in terms of interest in the vaccine. This, quite frankly, was an unexpected boost. I’m curious to see if it holds out over time.”

The governor’s offer has raised questions, however.

Some health-care workers have noted that people who recently had covid-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, are not eligible to receive a vaccine, she said.

Meanwhile, in southwest Ohio’s village of Camden in Preble County, population 2,000, reaction to the prospect of getting a prize of $1 million for being vaccinated was muted.

The town is home to a large population of German Baptist Brethren who live modestly and conservatively and are often confused by outsiders with the Amish because of the similarity in their dress.

Camden Village Pharmacy is one of only two vaccination sites in the county. Only the Johnson & Johnson shot is dispensed there. Pharmacist Carol Perry said the demand for the vaccine has decreased over the past month, and DeWine’s announcement hadn’t boosted turnout — at least on the day after the announcement.

“It’s been no more busy than usual,” Perry said.

When the vaccine was first available, she and pharmacy staffers averaged 80 shots a day. Now, they’re down to about five.

“But maybe it will pick up once word gets out more,” Perry said. And, perhaps, the motivation of money is moving the needle in Preble County. By the end of Friday, the pharmacy had reported 10 vaccinations, the most since things slowed down a month ago.

Camden resident and retiree Mark Glidden, 66, was mailing a letter at the post office by the pharmacy. He has already been vaccinated and didn’t think the prize would do much to persuade people who were staunchly opposed to getting a coronavirus vaccine.

“But I think it could bring in people who are sitting on the fence,” Glidden said.

At a mobile vaccination clinic in the southwest part of Montgomery County, Ohio, four people had just received a vaccine dose Thursday. Not one was spurred by the million-dollar lottery prize.

Nor did two mechanics walking by show any interest in the governor’s lure.

“It is a lottery. The chances of winning it are slim to none,” said Chris Cusick, 31, who said he has no plans to get vaccinated.

“I would like to see it on the market longer before I get it,” said Brad George, 37, another mechanic.

Americans are divided into three main groups when it comes to the coronavirus vaccines. The “yes” group is made up of those who have gotten vaccinated or are eager to, representing about 65 percent of adults, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey conducted in April. Those in the “no” group — 13 percent — say they definitely won’t get vaccinated. The “maybe” group — 21 percent — are in “wait-and-see” mode or would get vaccinated if required.

There are other ways to slice and dice the hesitancy. Politics is a factor. The pandemic has long been mired in polarizing ideological battles, and some people view not getting vaccinated as a political statement. In surveys, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to be averse to vaccination. States in the Deep South are generally trailing behind the national average in their vaccination rates.

Some people aren’t hesitant so much as busy and need a nudge. Or they’re isolated in remote Zip codes and need a compelling reason to travel to a vaccination site. And some are still unsure about the safety of the vaccines. DeWine refers to these people as the “persuadeables.”

They stand in contrast to the hardened “anti-vaxxers” who subscribe to discredited theories about the safety of inoculations generally.

As officials and vaccine advocates across the country have tried to imagine what would make people get inoculated, they’ve focused less on money and more on things people really enjoy. Fun stuff.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) has endorsed a “Shot and a Beer” incentive program, in tandem with breweries, in which people who get a first vaccine dose will get a free beer.

In D.C., a group called DC Marijuana Justice gave away more than 4,200 joints at vaccination sites on April 20. In Memphis, a “Shot for Shot Sweepstakes” offers a free car to a lucky winner with an official vaccination card. And at a southern Illinois recreational shooting facility, anyone getting a shot from a mobile vaccination unit there can receive 100 targets of trap, skeet or sporting clays.

One state that isn’t offering cash or college tuition — or any other goody — is Pennsylvania. It developed its own incentive: If 70 percent of eligible people got their shots, the state would lift its mask mandate for everyone.

That incentive now looks less generous, given new guidance on masking from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. On Thursday, the agency said fully vaccinated people did not need to wear masks indoors or outdoors in most situations. Will that make people more likely to get a shot? It’s unclear.

Surveys suggest that relaxing guidelines on masks and social distancing will have a minimal effect on willingness to get vaccinated. An Economist-YouGov poll theorized that this could be because vaccine skeptics are already less likely to obey those guidelines in the first place.

Cash is a different story.

In an ongoing study by University of California at Los Angeles researcher Lynn Vavreck that involves more than 75,000 people, more than one-third of unvaccinated people said they would be motivated by a monetary reward. More were swayed by $100 than $25.

The bottom line is that incentives have been shown to work, said Noel Brewer, a University of North Carolina professor who studies the intersection of public health and human behavior. Studies show that vaccination uptake increases by a median of eight percentage points when people are offered incentives, Brewer said.

The Biden administration is getting into the game. It has teamed up with some of the country’s largest corporations to offer incentives. The deals include 10 percent off a grocery bill at Safeway or Albertsons, a $5 Target coupon, and a free snack or beverage at a Vitamin Shoppe.

President Biden set a goal: 70 percent of adults with at least one vaccine dose by July 4. As with previous goals, the administration picked one that’s achievable, possibly well in advance of the target date. The CDC reported Sunday that 59.8 percent of adults had received at least one dose. Roughly 26 million more people need a shot for the country to reach the 70 percent goal. That would require about 540,000 newly dosed people a day on average. The country in recent days has been administering close to 2 million shots daily.

In Seattle, the city government this month began to offer free food at pop-up vaccine clinics that target holdout populations. Don Blakeney, executive director of the U District Partnership, a business development group in the area that helped sponsor a vaccine clinic, said the incentives were there to give “a little nudge.”

“They are not there to persuade people who will never ever get the vaccine, but really for community members who just haven’t found the time,” he said.

Maine Gov. Janet Mills (D) announced the state’s public-private initiative — titled “Your Shot to Get Outdoors” — during a Tuesday discussion with Biden and fellow governors.

The collaboration between the state and companies such as L.L.Bean and Oxford Plains Speedway will offer newly vaccinated adults everything from fishing and hunting licenses to tickets to watch the Portland Sea Dogs.

“A whole lot of people are sitting on the fence,” said John Hebert, chief pharmacist of Hebert Rexall Pharmacy in rural Van Buren, Maine.

The dramatic move by Ohio’s governor to offer high-dollar incentives has already drawn criticism from within his state, with state Rep. Jon Cross (R) calling it “game-show gimmicks” and state Rep. Emilia Sykes, the top House Democrat, calling it a “grave misuse” of federal relief funds.

Andy Slavitt, an adviser on the virus to Biden, said he supports the attention to vaccines that the lottery brings. He told CNN that the Treasury Department has not looked into whether this is an appropriate use of federal funds.

In Cleveland, patients trickled into walk-in vaccination sites Thursday following DeWine’s announcement. At the Wolstein Center, an arena downtown where National Guard members have presided over a mass vaccination site since March, staffers far outnumbered patients. The site in recent days has administered only a few hundred doses, a far cry from the 6,000 distributed daily when it opened. Numbers rose modestly Thursday and Friday — after DeWine’s announcement — compared with Wednesday, but they were lower than on Tuesday.

Maj. Kim Snow said her sister’s husband hadn’t been vaccinated, but “maybe that chance of the million will get him on board.”

At a Rite Aid in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, where three-quarters of residents are Black and virus vaccination rates are low, nine of the 10 parking spaces reserved for people getting vaccinated sat empty.

Inside, Lana Davis, 64, said she was nervous about getting vaccinated but was motivated because she works as a home health aide, and her family members had encouraged her. The governor’s million-dollar prize played no role: “I think it’s crazy,” she said.

Lyria Ford, 68, said her family was a bigger factor than the vaccination lottery in helping her overcome her fear of the side effects.

“I’ve got, like, 30 grandkids,” she said. “I don’t want to not be around them.”

About the cash prize, she added: “I’m not going to win it.”

Columbus resident Sadea Bryant said she’s holding off on getting vaccinated until she’s comfortable that the long-term effects have been thoroughly studied. The newness of the coronavirus vaccines worries her.

“I just need a little bit more time,” she said.

She and her husband were watching television Wednesday night when they saw the governor’s announcement about the million-dollar lottery. She wasn’t sold.

“I understand that they want to push people to really think about their health and get vaccinated,” she said. “But it feels to me kind of like a bribe.”

600,000 dead Americans

Not one was vaccinated.

Not one is dead as a direct result of getting vaccinated.

Stop the STOOPID

Upside Down & Backwards

Once you've convince people they're under attack, they can become self-actuating weapons against whatever you've taught them to look out for.

If you've alerted them to real threats - and provided them with accurate up-to-date information - then it's fairly likely that you'll have a good bunch of good people trying to be aware of the dangers and taking appropriate steps to protect themselves and their families etc (although you have to be a little careful to keep some measure of control - people can be dumb dangerous animals when simply left to their own devices, and the lid can get blown clean off).

[insert obscure TV & movie references here: The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street, 1941, The Russians Are Coming The Russians Are Coming, Cold Turkey, etc]

Which brings us to the MAGA rubes. If you've thrown all manner of bullshit conspiracy fantasies at them, and you've got them all amped up over perceived threats that aren't real, then you've just got an angry unruly mob of self-righteous zealots who'll do the most atrocious things, believing they're perfectly justified in the name of defending hearth and home and blah blah blah.

That's the difference and that's the point.

And fake lord help us if we put those idiots in charge of anything of consequence.

WaPo: (pay wall)

Commander of Space Force unit fired after accusing the military of pushing an agenda ‘rooted in Marxism’

The self-published book carries a conspiratorial title and a purportedly urgent message: A Marxist plot is afoot to infiltrate the military and overthrow the U.S. government, it alleges.

Some of its subjects are familiar specters in right-wing politics — critical race theory, diversity initiatives and the New York Times’s 1619 Project — but these claims came from a new source last week: an active-duty member of the U.S. Space Force.

Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier published his book, “Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military,” this week and appeared on multiple conservative podcasts to promote it, each time criticizing Defense Department leadership and accusing the agency of pushing an agenda that is “rooted in Marxism.”

Lohmeier, who spent more than a decade with the Air Force before joining the military’s newest branch in 2020, was fired Friday for his comments, a move first reported by Military.com a day later and confirmed by The Washington Post on Sunday. Lt. Gen. Stephen Whiting, the head of Space Operations Command, relieved Lohmeier of his command of a Colorado-based squadron that detects ballistic missile launches “due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead,” a Space Force spokesperson said in a statement.

“This decision was based on public comments made by Lt. Col. Lohmeier in a recent podcast,” said the spokesperson, who added that an investigation is underway “on whether these comments constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”

In an email to The Post, Lohmeier said that he consulted with a military public affairs officer and legal counsel before publishing the book and that he had a team of attorneys read the manuscript.

“I complied with what I understood was required as part of the pre-publication process,” he said.

Lohmeier said he did not inform his chain of command that he was writing a book.

“The entirety of the work was done during my free time, after duty hours and on weekends, using my own resources,” he said.

Lohmeier, who is based in Colorado, graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2006 and spent time as a fighter pilot and instructor.

A description of the book promises readers that “after becoming aware of the Marxist conquest of American society, you will never again look at things in the same way.” In podcast interviews over the past two weeks, Lohmeier argued that part of that “conquest” has taken place in the U.S. military.

“What we saw taking place in the country and in the military, frankly, during this past year especially was reminiscent of Mao’s cultural revolution where you had to toe a certain party line,” Lohmeier said on “The Steve Gruber Show,” a conservative radio program, in a reference to Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in China, which is estimated to have led to 1.5 million deaths.

Some experts have denied Lohmeier’s assertions.

“We seem to have more and more people spouting off about Marxism, communism and socialism who don’t seem to have a clue what they’re talking about,” said John Sipher, a former CIA operative and fellow at the Atlantic Council, in a tweet responding to Lohmeier’s comments.

- more -

Know Your Shit

Sorry - coprolites. Know your coprolites.

Mass Extinction in The Human Gut Revealed by Fossil Remains of 2,000-Year-Old Feces

The microbes living in our gut are way less diverse than they were 2,000 years ago.

That's one of the key findings from a genomic analysis of fossilized human feces from rock shelters across North America and Mexico. Eight samples dating to between 1,000 and 2,000 years ago reveal microbes that are totally new to science, as well as others completely absent from the gut microbiome today.

By contrast, the modern gut microbiome contains vastly more antibiotic-resistant microbes than those of our ancestors. These findings could help us understand the connection - if there is one - between our diminished microbiome and the higher modern incidence of 'industrial' chronic diseases such as diabetes and obesity.

The human microbiome is a fascinating and complex machine, and in recent years, scientists have been discovering that it plays a much more important role in keeping our bodies healthy than we previously realized. But our understanding of how the human microbiome has changed over time is limited.

Enter fossilized feces, scientifically known as coprolites. Although these fossils may seem rather unpleasant, they can be rich sources of information about how ancient animals lived, revealing complex information about diet and intestinal parasites and diseases.

They also contain some of the microbes that line the gut, allowing anyone with the proper tools to compile a snapshot of the microbiome. That's what an international team of microbiologists led by the Joslin Diabetes Center in the US has done, in the greatest detail yet for any ancient human gut microbiome.

The researchers took coprolites perfectly preserved in three rock shelters - the Boomerang Shelter in Utah, an unknown location somewhere in the American Southwest (the samples were collected nearly 100 years ago and poorly labeled), and the La Cueva de los Muertos Chiquitos site in Durango, Mexico.

These coprolites were validated as human using dietary analysis, and dated using radiocarbon analysis. The scientists then conducted the intricate work of extracting the precious preserved DNA that could identify the microbes.

The researchers successfully reconstructed 498 microbial genomes; of those, 181 were the most likely to have originated in the human gut, rather than the surrounding soil.

Of these sequences, 158 seemed to represent a distinct microbial species of some kind. These were then compared to 789 microbiomes from present-day communities, from both industrial and non-industrial communities.

The results were striking. Not only were the ancient microbiomes more similar to those from modern non-industrial communities, but they contained species not seen in any modern microbiome. Of the 158 genomes, 61 were completely unknown to science - that's almost 40 percent.

This diversity in the microbiome, the researchers believe, may have something to do with diversity in diet.

"In ancient cultures, the foods you're eating are very diverse and can support a more eclectic collection of microbes," said microbiologist Alexsandar Kostic of the Joslin Diabetes Center.

"But as you move toward industrialization and more of a grocery-store diet, you lose a lot of nutrients that help to support a more diverse microbiome."

There were some fascinating differences within the microbes, too. They had fewer genes associated with antibiotic resistance, but they also had fewer genes for producing proteins that degrade glycans, the sugar molecules found in mucus.

Degradation of the colonic mucus is associated with diseases such as Crohn's disease, celiac disease, and ulceric colitis.

The ancient microbes had higher numbers of transposases, too - enzymes that can cut-and-paste and replicate elements of DNA, switching things around to help adapt to changing conditions, among other things.

"We think this could be a strategy for the microbes to adapt in an environment that shifts a lot more than the modern industrialized microbiome, where we eat the same things and live the same life more or less year-round," Kostic said.

"Whereas in a more traditional environment, things change and microbes need to adapt. They might use this much larger collection of transposases to grab and collect genes that will help them adapt to the different environments."

How the evolving microbiome may have altered our health is unclear, and the sample size is fairly small, but the study shows that we can use coprolites to explore the guts of our ancestors to figure out what's changed. In turn, this could lead to better health outcomes in the future.

"Similar future studies tapping into the richness of palaeofeces will not only expand our knowledge of the human microbiome, but may also lead to the development of approaches to restore present-day gut microbiomes to their ancestral state," the team wrote in their paper.

Can't wait to hear from the Paleo-this and Paleo-that gang, as they swarm all over this one.

I'm not saying - and I will never say - that there's nothing we can learn from any of this.

It just makes me cringe a little thinking that somebody's going to tell me I'm missing the next great awesomely awesome health craze because I'm not out there hunting 2000-year-old fossilized human turds to grind up and sprinkle this probiotic miracle supplement on my overnight oats.

I'm too old for that shit.

Today's Tweet

It starts with appropriately lofty terms - de jure and de facto.
Then ends with appropriately vulgar terms - shut the fuck and read some books.

The perfect rant.

Take 2-minutes today and listen to this tutorial on systemic and institutionalized racism...pic.twitter.com/0ded0gV7Ac
via RexChapman 06

— Tomthunkit™ (@TomthunkitsMind) May 16, 2021

Today's New Thing

Stuff that fascinates me.

Cats have a precise method of walking called direct registering. Their hind paws fall inside the place of their forepaws, minimizing noise and visible tracks, while ensuring more stable footing.

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   634,077 (⬆︎ .39%)
New Deaths:    12,153 (⬆︎ .36%)

USA

New Cases:   25,642 (⬆︎ .08%)
New Deaths:       499 (⬆︎ .08%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:           156.2 million (⬆︎ .58%)
Total Eligible Population:   55.7%
Total Population:                47.1%

And let's not worry about the prospect of an Inflation-Driven Recession, or the lingering effects of the pandemic as Republicans drag their feet - as they run their standard "Do-Nothing-And-Blame-The-Dems-When-Nothing-Gets-Done" item from their playbook - intending to exploit it all in service of their narrow ambitions to regain power in order to move us closer to their dreams of plutocracy.

What we should be concentrating on is:

what're we all gonna wear!?!

Axios:

Fashion is adapting for a post-pandemic lifestyle

Consumers and retailers alike are still trying to figure out what Americans will want to wear as they head back out into the world after a year at home, in sweatpants.

Why it matters:

The choices people make about their post-pandemic wardrobes will help define what, exactly, our “new normal” is. They'll indicate how both work and socializing have changed, and will tell the story of how people expressed themselves in the aftermath of a year of massive transformation.

What we’re watching:

As sales begin to tick back up, both men and women seem to be moving on from their lockdown looks, but aren’t simply snapping back to their pre-pandemic tastes.
Handbag designers, for example, are still making compartments for hand sanitizer, and will probably continue to, said Lainie Schreiber of Latico Leathers. “We made sure to include pockets for the new essentials,” she said.

What’s trending:

• "Not a lot of suits and almost anything without a zipper or buttons," said Camille Wright of Style Consortium, a multi-line apparel showroom.
• “They cannot get enough dresses," she said. "Everyone wants to wear a dress right now. They want to be pretty.”
• Anything soft and flowing, especially in block prints or bright colors — pink, turquoise, lavender — is in.

Men’s purchases also suggest a lot of them are heading back to the office: They’re buying a ton of tops but fewer button ups. “Everything is kind of comfortable and kind of stretchy,” says Christine Alcalay, owner and operator of Kiwi, a women's store, and Fig, a men's retailer.

“People have enough sweatpants, but they’re still in their COVID bodies so they want really pretty things that aren’t too boxy but comfortable,” Alcalay said.

Denim, therefore, has taken a dip.

Between the lines:

• Businesses have been “extraordinarily cautious” about their inventory, and are now trying to pin down the post-pandemic market at a time when they can’t afford much experimentation.
• "We just didn't know what was going to happen,” Lisa Bobb of Squash Blossom, a women’s clothing boutique in Georgia, told Axios. “Was there going to be another wave? Were people going to be gathering for events or opting for smaller outings, where they'd be more casually dressed?”
• Retail clothing store sales dropped 5% month-over-month in April. And some specific categories have seen steep declines — women’s dresses and men’s suits saw prices fall 14% and 17%, respectively, from the start of 2020 to March 2021.

But overall apparel prices are now on the rise, and retail employment has improved over the past few months, too.

The bottom line:

“After the pandemic, people want to be happy and so I think that is what is translating into what people have been wearing,” Wright said.

We are the stoopid country 

A Deep Thought

The generation that invented internet technology is now the generation least likely to understand internet technology.

hat tip = r/showerthoughts

Today's Badge Of Honor

...goes to Molly Rogers.

"Oh dear - was it something I said?"

@JollyMollyRoger

COVID-19 Update

World

New Cases:   698,681 (⬆︎ .43%)
New Deaths:    12,839 (⬆︎ .38%)

USA

New Cases:   39,095 (⬆︎ .12%)
New Deaths:       733 (⬆︎ .12%)

Vaccination Scorecard

Total Vaccinations:           155.3 million (⬆︎ .45%)
Total Eligible Population:    55.4%
Total Population:                 46.8%

Interesting take - USAmerica Inc on "the honor system".

Lemme just say: lately, we've not proved to be widely trustworthy. We'll see how this goes.

BTW - 600,000 dead Americans by tomorrow or Monday.

And they'll all be people who weren't vaccinated. All of 'em.

WaPo:

The new mask guidance relies on an honor system. Do we trust each other enough to make it work?

As soon as Michelle Garrett verified that the new federal mask guidelines were real, she turned to her 14-year-old daughter, who just became eligible for vaccination against the coronavirus this week.

“Do you still need to wear your mask to school tomorrow?” she asked.

Garrett, a writer and communications consultant in Columbus, Ohio, almost didn’t believe the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s pronouncement Thursday that immunized people no longer need to wear face coverings in most situations. She said she wondered whether unvaccinated people would rip off their masks, putting her daughter at risk before she could get her shots. With no system to track whether people in public spaces have been inoculated, Garrett figured she couldn’t know for sure.

Her conundrum is common. In an intensely polarized nation, many people have little faith that their maskless fellow Americans have actually been vaccinated. That lack of trust, fueled by the ongoing politicization of the pandemic, tears at the fabric of a public-health strategy built on the assumption that other people will do the right thing.

Just more than 1 in 3 people in the United States are fully inoculated, leaving most of the population among those instructed to keep their face coverings securely over their noses when indoors. But with federal officials repeatedly rejecting the possibility of vaccine passports, enforcement relies on an honor system.

Asked Thursday how people will know if others had been vaccinated, Anthony S. Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, said they wouldn’t.

“You’re gonna be depending on people being honest enough to say whether they are vaccinated or not,” he told CNN.

As a result, the public’s lack of confidence in each other foments “a sort of existential crisis,” said Richard Carpiano, a medical sociologist and public-health scientist at the University of California at Riverside. He said trust functions as a social glue to hold together society.

“If that’s undermined substantially in relation to a potential threat to the health of ourselves or loved ones or other people in our community,” he said, “it’s not a good situation.”

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Widespread lack of faith in others isn’t new. About 70 percent of people told Pew Research in 2019 that they thought interpersonal confidence had declined in the past two decades. Last year, political polarization stood at its highest level in decades.

Behavior throughout the pandemic has also played a role in weakening trust. Garrett pointed to the many Americans who have rejected mask-wearing and social distancing over the past year, essentially to continue normal life.

She said she and her daughter will keep wearing masks indoors, even if their choice prompts others to assume that they haven’t gotten their shots. While Garrett said she expects to “side-eye” maskless people in indoor public spaces, she hopes they’ll be truly vaccinated.

Wyatt Hnatiw, a New York City resident who works in the technology industry, has slightly more faith in those around him. He said he assumes that most people will follow the rules and that those who don’t were probably refusing to wear a mask all along.

Hnatiw said he believes he’s sufficiently protected by his vaccination, even if some people pretend to have been immunized. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky sought to reassure vaccinated people Thursday that they’re safe, even if they don’t know others’ vaccination status.

The bigger problem for Hnatiw, he said, is what others will think of him if he doesn’t wear a mask. He knows people might correctly assume that he’s gotten his shots, but they also might think he’s simply unconcerned about others’ health. He said he’s been keeping a face covering around his wrist so that he can put it on near crowds for other people’s comfort.

“If they’re concerned themselves, then it’s a really low burden for me to put the mask on to make them feel safer,” Hnatiw said, “even if it’s not, strictly speaking, necessary.”

Hnatiw’s strategy may ease some worry for immunocompromised people and those who lack access to or eligibility for the vaccine. The honor system for masking puts people in those categories “at the mercy of others’ behavior,” said Andrea Polonijo, a medical sociologist at the University of California at Riverside.

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Polonijo, who’s immunocompromised, said the fact that some people have lied about their social distancing makes her feel like the new mask guidance essentially pushes people like her back into their homes.

“At least with mask mandates in place, we knew that everyone around us was doing something to help us reduce our risk,” she said. “But now doing basic things like grocery shopping has become less safe for us.”

A four-time cancer survivor, Lisa Lindstrom said she’s unsure whether her vaccinations will protect her as well as they would for people without any health conditions. She expects there to be significant overlap between people refusing vaccination and those declining to wear masks, so she’s waiting for guidance from her oncologist before deciding how much she feels comfortable being inside with others. Lindstrom is spending most of her time at her Seattle home until then — cooking, baking and taking online courses to become a yoga teacher.

Carpiano, the public-health scientist, said that kind of decision exemplifies how the new federal guidance individualizes the risk of getting sick. He said he expects discussions about private businesses requiring proof of vaccination to pick up steam.

For now, Carpiano said the nation is likely to struggle with the consequences of a lack of interpersonal trust. Misinformation about the coronavirus has been common for the past year, he said, and people in the U.S. never came to agree on how much of a threat the pathogen really was.

“If we’re having challenges coming to a general recognition of what the threat is and what exactly is the reality,” he said, “and even questions about who knows best and who can give us the best information — even that is going to affect our ability to come together as communities to say, ‘We’ve got to deal with this problem.’”