Today's Wingnut

Tell me you're a Taliban-adjacent asshole without using the word "Taliban".

The Kansas City Star:

Missouri Senate candidate Mark McCloskey says teen incest victims should be denied abortions

Republican Missouri Senate candidate Mark McCloskey told an audience last week he believes 13-year-old rape and incest victims should not be allowed to have abortions, stating he had a client who was raped at 13 but who gave birth to a child who now has a master’s degree. He made the comments in response to an audience member’s question at a forum in Osage Beach. “There’s a lot of candidates that say they’re pro-life but really they’re not completely pro-life,” the woman in the audience said, according to a video of the event posted on Facebook. “There’s a lot of, ‘Well in this case it would be allowed.’”

McCloskey, a St. Louis personal injury attorney, responded that he doesn’t “believe in any exceptions.” “We were down in Poplar Bluff a couple of months ago, and somebody asked me that question, ‘So you would force a 13-year-old who’s raped by a family member to keep that baby?’” he said. “And I said, ‘Yes, and more than that I’ve got that client.’ I’ve got a client who was raped by an uncle when she was 13 years old, had the child; she finished high school, finished college and got a master’s degree. That child she would have aborted finished high school, finished college and now has a master’s degree.”

It’s not clear whether McCloskey meant both the mother and the child got master’s degrees. His campaign could not immediately be reached for comment on the circumstances of the mother becoming his client. He also didn’t explicitly discuss whether his no-exceptions view includes abortions to save the life of the mother. The statements are among the most aggressive yet from Republicans seeking to curb abortions with few exceptions. Missouri passed a law in 2019 banning abortions at 8 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape and incest, but it has so far been blocked from implementation by a federal court. Most Missouri Republicans are anti-abortion but few have addressed questions of rape and incest directly. A portion of his comments was captured and sent to The Star by American Bridge, a Democratic research organization. The full hour-and-a-half candidate forum, hosted by We the People Camden County, was also posted online. Jane Cunningham, a Republican former state senator who attended the event, said the audience was thrilled by his answer. The “right to life” is a key part in the decision-making of primary voters, she said.

“It’s one of the litmus tests if you’re running in a Republican primary,” Cunningham said. Abortion exceptions have been a treacherous topic for Republicans running for U.S. Senate. In 2012, then-Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican nominee for Senate, was asked by a television station whether he supported abortion rights for women who had been raped. Akin, who died this month, responded, “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down,” in a comment that sank his Senate campaign. McCloskey’s opponents in the Republican primary have all staked out anti-abortion stances. Most notably, Attorney General Eric Schmitt is defending the 2019 Missouri law in federal court. On Tuesday, he announced he was joining a lawsuit against the Biden administration seeking to reinstate a Donald Trump-era order that barred family planning clinics that receive federal funding from referring patients for abortions. Former Gov. Eric Greitens has pointed out his convening of an special legislative session on abortion in 2017.

Told of McCloskey’s comments, retiring Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., said he is “trying to stay out of the Senate race,” but that he disagreed with McCloskey and supports exceptions to allow abortion in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Abortion rights nationally hinge on a Supreme Court case, to be heard later this year, concerning Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The court in that case could overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent that set a constitutional right to the procedure in the first trimester. If Roe is struck down, Congress may take a more active role in regulating abortion. In September, the House passed a bill that would codify abortion rights in federal law. It’s virtually doomed to fail in the current Senate, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans. McCloskey and his wife were catapulted to fame last summer when they brandished guns at Black Lives Matter protesters who were marching down their street in St. Louis. He launched a campaign for Senate this year and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in the incident. His wife pleaded guilty to misdemeanor harassment; Gov. Mike Parson granted both a promised pardon weeks later. McCloskey has donated to Democratic candidates in the past, including former Sen. Claire McCaskill, who defeated Akin in 2012.

In Osage Beach, he said it had bothered him “as long ago as when I was in grade school” that some death penalty opponents also support abortion rights. His comments received applause from the audience. “The justice of the Supreme Court in the most heinous crimes don’t have the right to decide who should live and die,” he said. “But every 13-year-old girl on the street should be able to decide the fate of the life of their child?”

C'Ville Today

This morning in Charlottesville

One of the organizers of that Unite The Right mess here in my hometown in August 2017 - Richard Spencer - is among the defendants in a civil suit brought by victims of the violence that these assholes perpetrated.

Glenn Youngkin (that's his bus) is the GOP candidate for governor.

I have to allow for some probability that these folks aren't who they appear to be, and are doing this in a sarcastic/ironic kinda way, but this one very large fact says otherwise:

Youngkin tells the MAGArubes he's down with Trump, but then he lies about it when he goes amongst the far less-rabid "independent or undecided voters" in the big squishy middle. That tells me this is almost exactly what's to be expected.

Is Glenn Youngkin a Q-addled racist Trumpster asshole? We really don't know, but he's got strong support from a whole big bunch of Q-addled racist Trumpster assholes who apparently believe him to be one of them. So - yeah. That.

Election Day is this Tuesday (11-2). It's going to be a nervous 4 days.

BTW, here's a partial transcript of a Richard Spencer meltdown (the night of 08-12-2017) posted on Twitter in a long thread by Molly Conger:

This shit is not over - even when it's over, it ain't over, Yogi. Our dads and grandads stomped on these pricks until there was nothing left but greasy spots on sidewalks around the world, but they'll always be with us in one iteration or another. No matter how we beat them down, they'll be back - at some point, they'll be back.

And then it'll be up to our children, or their children, to beat them down again.

'Twas ever thus

and ever thus 'twill be

Today In Daddy State News

Daddy State Awareness - Rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession

Insider:

A QAnon influencer who accused Democrats of being pedophiles turned out to be a convicted child molester

A mid-level QAnon personality who often accuses top Democrats of being pedophiles is himself a convicted child molester.

David Todeschini, 70, runs a medium-sized channel on Bitchute, an alternative video sharing site like YouTube, called Net4TruthUSA.

In several of his videos, Todeschini has said Democrats are pedophiles. In the title of one recent video, Todeschini wrote that President Joe Biden was a "cho-mo," which is prison slang for pedophile.

QAnon followers claim that there is a "deep state" of senior Democratic Party politicos, CEOs, and celebrities that run a sex cult involving children. There is no evidence for this theory.

However, records show that Todeschini is in fact a pedophile. In 1990, he was convicted of coercing an 8-year-old boy into sexual acts in 1987, as noted on the New York state sex offenders register.

The news was first reported by Right Wing Watch.

Todeschini, who is known in QAnon circles as David Trent, is classed as a level three threat by New York state, meaning he has a "high risk of repeat offense and a threat to public safety exists."

He was released from prison in 2006 and said in a recent video that he now lives in North Carolina.

- more -

COVID-19 Update

NBC29 in Charlottesville

note: Their website sucks - very snoopy and aggressive with their ads, which slows everything down for me. Just sayin'

Virginia Dept of Health: 924,771 total cases of COVID-19 in Virginia, 13,907 deaths

The Virginia Department of Health reports there is now a total of 924,771 COVID-19 cases in the commonwealth as of Friday, October 29, dating to the beginning of the pandemic in March 2020.The number of newly reported cases since yesterday is 1,646.

Virginia’s death total from the virus is at 13,907, 37 more than yesterday.

The total number of people tested is 13,815,410, an increase of 35,341 since yesterday.

STAT News:

3 takeaways from the emergence of the ‘Delta Plus’ coronavirus variant

Yet another version of the coronavirus is getting global attention, this one dubbed AY.4.2. It appears that it could be slightly more transmissible than the Delta variant — a marginal difference that experts say is more of a headache than a devastating gamechanger in the scope of the pandemic. Still, the emergence of AY.4.2 offers lessons about the ongoing evolution of the pathogen.

AY.4.2 has caused some alarm because its prevalence is building up in the United Kingdom, where it’s even gained ground on the remarkably transmissible Delta variant. It now accounts for about 10% of sequenced virus samples in England.

Scientists are still trying to determine what, if any, competitive advantage the newer form of the virus has over Delta, and there are a number of possible explanations for AY.4.2’s increasing frequency.

One option is that AY.4.2 isn’t actually a better spreader, but by chance, it’s the virus that’s circulating in populations or parts of the country where cases are rising fastest. Perhaps the mutations it has picked up do make it inherently more transmissible than Delta. Maybe it’s able to get around people’s immune protection to a greater extent, causing reinfections or breakthrough infections at higher rates than Delta. Or it could be some combination of those factors.

“A high observed growth rate may be due to a biological change in the virus (transmissibility or immune escape) or to epidemiological context, such as being introduced into an area or population subgroup with high existing levels of transmission,” said a report last week from the UK Health Security Agency. “It is still uncertain whether AY.4.2 is growing due to a biological difference.”

Studies that examine how well our immune systems, primed by vaccines or past infections, fight off AY.4.2 could help answer that question, and scientists are also waiting to see if the pattern in the United Kingdom repeats if and when AY.4.2 establishes a beachhead in other countries.

To determine if AY.4.2 is indeed more transmissible, “you need to see the difference in more geographies, and is it sustained over a long period,” said Jeremy Kamil, a virologist at Louisiana State University Health Shreveport.

Still, some scientists estimate AY.4.2 has perhaps a 10% to 15% transmission advantage over Delta, which, in the grand scheme of the pandemic, wouldn’t lead to drastically more infections.

AY.4.2 is itself a descendant of the original Delta variant and is sometimes called “Delta Plus.” It’s appeared as Delta has continued to circulate around the world, branching into a number of sublineages as it has acquired additional mutations.

Below, STAT outlines three takeaways and questions about AY.4.2 and what its emergence signals about the ongoing and future evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The coronavirus can still potentially find new ways to enhance its transmissibility

Some scientists had wondered whether Delta was so transmissible that it had reached some peak spreading capacity. Or they speculated that if Delta were to gain any new spreading prowess, it might have to cede some other feature, such as how often it causes severe disease. After all, mutation combinations that confer certain traits sometimes come at the expense of others.

But if AY.4.2 does in fact have an edge over Delta, it disproves that theory. On top of potentially being more transmissible than the original Delta strain, the preliminary evidence out of the U.K. indicates Delta Plus carries the same risk of hospitalization and death as its parent virus (though that is based on limited data).

Whether Delta itself causes more severe disease on average than earlier forms of the virus remains an open question; in some countries, researchers have reported that Delta was causing higher rates of hospitalizations among people with Covid-19, though other research — including a report last week from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — did not find a difference in disease severity.

- snip -

The daughters of Delta

Earlier in the pandemic, different worrisome variants popped up, like Alpha in the U.K., Beta in South Africa, Gamma in Brazil, and Delta in India (or at least, those were the countries where the strains were first noticed). Those variants shared some of the same mutations, but they all emerged independently.

Now, with Delta so dominant globally, experts anticipate that future variants that raise alarms will almost certainly be descendants of the original Delta strain — just like AY.4.2.

- snip -

What does Delta Plus mean for the United States?

It’s perhaps not a surprise that the U.K. noticed AY.4.2 so quickly. The country has an incredible sequencing system in place to monitor genetic changes in the virus, and researchers there have been among the global leaders in characterizing different mutations and forms of the virus. It’s possible that other Delta sublineages have similar growth rates to AY.4.2, but they’re in parts of the world where it will take longer for scientists to detect.

“Not everyone is as on top of it as the U.K. is,” Kamil said.

The U.S. sequencing network has improved throughout the pandemic, and right now it’s indicating that AY.4.2 accounts for just a smidgen of cases — less than 1% — and is not igniting outbreaks.

“We have on occasion identified the sublineage here in the United States, but not with recent increased frequency or clustering to date,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said at a briefing last week.

It’s possible that whatever transmission advantage AY.4.2 has over Delta is so narrow that it will take a while for it to start to gain on its parent strain in places beyond the United Kingdom. Also, there’s a lot of randomness when a new form of a pathogen gets introduced into an area — many imported cases simply die out without setting off a transmission chain. If AY.4.2 has just a small edge over Delta, then probability dictates it would require more imported cases for some to take off than if something much more transmissible arrived.

- more -

COVID-19 Update

In and out in just under 35 minutes yesterday - including the 15 minutes of "wait-here-to-make-sure-you-don't-die" after the jab. Which was a piece of cake - I had a nurse named Danielle who was very good. My arm's not even sore this time around. Thank you, Danielle.

And let's not ignore an opportunity to link one important aspect of healthcare in USAmerica Inc with another. (I'm not just being shitty here - we have a long long way to go before we get some of the fuckery out of this ridiculous profit-driven system. Every reminder that head and heart go together makes a little bit of difference)

WaPo:

Vaccine eligibility for mood disorders underscores elevated covid risk

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention added mood disorders to the list of conditions that put people at high risk for severe covid-19 recently, clinicians were not surprised. The mind-body connection, they say, is long-settled research.

But the scientific seal of approval is still critical: It makes millions of people eligible for booster shots based on their mental health diagnosis alone and gives vulnerable groups more reason to protect themselves.

“This is a population that is really, really at risk due to the way that covid-19 interacts with the diagnoses,” said Lisa Dailey, executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center. “Until the CDC put this group of disorders on their list, they would not have known that.”

The CDC on Oct. 14 added “mental health conditions” to a long list of mostly physical conditions that make someone likely to be hospitalized, need a ventilator or die of the coronavirus, including cancer, diabetes and obesity.

The change means it is important for people with “mood disorders, including depression, and schizophrenia spectrum disorders” to get vaccinated — with initial doses and boosters — and take preventive measures, such as masking, social distancing and hand-washing, according to the CDC.

Public health experts say these precautions are critical for people who are older or have multiple conditions on the list, which is not intended to be comprehensive and has been updated frequently throughout the pandemic.

The addition of mental illness to the high-risk list could put millions of Americans on notice.

In 2019, more than 19 million people — nearly 8 percent of adults in the United States — had at least one episode of depression, and at least half that number were diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, according to federal data.

The numbers have only grown since then, according to research published this month in the journal Lancet. Worldwide, the pandemic triggered 53 million new cases of depression in 2020, a 28 percent increase from the previous year, the research shows.

The statistics underscore the suffering Dana Mueller, director of adult and family medicine at Mary’s Center, the D.C. community health clinic, has seen during the pandemic.

Her patients, many of whom are front-line workers, have more anxiety and depression, as well as out-of-control diabetes, hypertension and obesity, and often multiple risk factors at once. Yet 11 months into vaccine availability, Mueller is still giving first doses. That’s why, she said, her relationship with her patients — combined with scientific backing — is key.

“They’re just waiting to hear it from us. Anything we can say to say, ‘This matters and you’re at increased risk,’ ” Mueller said.

Advocates at the local and national level lobbied the CDC for months to consider adding mental illness to the high-risk list, which already included substance use disorders, such as addiction to alcohol, opioids or cocaine.

Two comprehensive meta-analyses published in the Journal of the American Medical Association confirmed that people with serious mental illness are more at risk for severe illness from covid-19.

One study that analyzed data from seven countries found that individuals with schizophrenia were the second-likeliest group to die of covid-19, after the elderly.

Roger S. McIntyre, scientific advisory board chair at the Chicago-based Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance, is one of the researchers behind the other paper, which reviewed 21 studies that included more than 91 million people.

The study found a strong link between preexisting mood disorders and hospitalization and death, even when adjusting for smoking, comorbidities such as heart disease, and insecurity in health care, housing and employment, he said.

“Taken together, we’ve got reasons to be hypervigilant for people who have depression. They’ve got to get in front of the queue to get their vaccines,” said McIntyre, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

Several experts noted that not enough is known about the biology of mental illness and covid-19 to understand why the outcomes are worse when both are present.

Anna Mendez, executive director of the nonprofit Partner for Mental Health in Charlottesville, an affiliate of Mental Health America, got involved when she discovered a local shelter would accept only clients who had a condition on the CDC high-risk list. She had a client whose mood disorder made him ineligible at the time.

“If service providers in our little town are using this list to determine eligibility, it has to be happening elsewhere,” she said.

Her organization and 15 others signed a Sept. 22 letter to CDC Director Rochelle Walensky calling for an “immediate and urgent response.”

“Our organizations hope that the CDC will seize this opportunity to demonstrate that individuals with these conditions are not invisible and deserve the consideration afforded to those living with other conditions appropriately identified on the CDC’s list,” they wrote.

Mary Giliberti, executive vice president of policy at Mental Health America, based in Alexandria, said the change could fuel appropriate outreach and community services specifically for people with mood disorders.

“This is very significant because I think it will make a tremendous difference to people who have these mental health conditions, their families and their providers,” she said.

- more -

Overheard

With all the sniping and snarky backbiting going on amongst the Press Poodles and the politicians and the lobbyists, and big bunches of dumbass voters, keep in mind that Joe Biden has gotten passed, and is getting passed, a $5 Trillion package of COVID relief, infrastructure investment, and people-centered initiatives - all of which are much needed - and he's getting it done in the face of the usual deadbeat GOP fuckery, with a 5-vote majority in the house and a 50-50 Senate that includes 2 "Democrats" who act like they own the fuckin' place.

$5,000,000,000,000.00

The MAGAverse Right Now

Here's Charlie Kirk working pretty hard to walk back the calls he and others have been whistling to the rubes for a good long time.

And like others in this new-but-not-at-all-new "conservative" thing, Charlie is terrified by the monster he's helped create.

He knows it's just a matter of time before they turn on him - because he's too soft - or he's not really committed - or he's a CINO, or an infiltrator. Happens every time with purity movements.

"everybody in the whole world is fucked up 'cept you and me -

and I've got my doubts about you"

Previous to this questioner, there was at least one guy asking about "The National Divorce", which is the euphemism these asshats use so they can deny calling for secession and a civil war do-over.

If you're a real glutton for heartache, you can skip to about 58:50, where he tells the nursing school student basically to shut up and muddle thru ("you can outlast them"), and less than a minute later, he brags on himself, saying he'd make a stink.

Translation: "You're weak and I'm strong. You can't do the wondrously courageous things that I can do and blah blah blah." This is a slap across the face, but dressed up in a kind of subtle sales pitch to get people to follow quietly and keep sending him money. "I can always do to you what you want me to do to them - and I will unless you stay in line behind me."

So in the end, all of this nonsense points to the usual grift we've been seeing for years - mostly from Republicans - and we keep getting more confirmation that there's a cult of maybe 20 or 30 million rubes, each with a few bucks to spend on this kind of political masturbation, and Charlie Kirk is among many who're trying to carve out a niche for themselves so they can continue living comfortably at someone else's expense.

Think about a Venn diagram showing the overlap of the MAGArubes at this little confab in Idaho, and the audience at Pro Wrestling.

Now think about Trump's frequent appearance at WWE "matches".

Today's Reddit

Little horses can be such jerks.

COVID-19 Update

The world will probably top 5,000,000 dead in the next 5-7 days.

And in the US, even though the number of new cases per day has fallen by 60% since the Delta Wave began, we should be at 700,000 dead Americans before Christmas.

WaPo:

Opinion: Stop the false narrative about young children and covid. They need vaccines.

Advisers to the Food and Drug Administration marked a milestone in the covid-19 pandemic on Tuesday, as they recommended authorization of the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for children ages 5 to 11. Having millions more Americans eligible for vaccination could influence the trajectory of the pandemic and reduce community infection rates, though I believe the more significant outcome will be that young kids will finally be protected from illness, disability and death.

Data presented at the meeting refutes the pervasive and false narrative that young children are not affected by the coronavirus. Since the beginning of the pandemic, at least 1.8 million children between 5 and 11 have been diagnosed with covid-19. Kids in this age range currently constitute more than 1 in 10 new infections. More than 8,600 children have been hospitalized, with 1 in 3 hospitalizations requiring intensive care. Tragically, 143 young children have died.

While many of the children suffering severe illness have underlying medical conditions such as obesity or asthma, nearly one-third of hospitalizations occurred among children who were otherwise healthy. Younger children appear to be most susceptible to multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), a serious condition occurring several weeks after covid-19 infection that affects multiple organ systems and can cause long-lasting effects. Half of the more than 5,200 MIS-C cases to date have been in 5- to 13-year-olds. Sixty to 70 percent of MIS-C patients were admitted to intensive care, and 1 to 2 percent died. Two in 3 children afflicted with MIS-C report ongoing symptoms more than 60 days after diagnosis.

I’ve written previously about the fallacy of comparing the severity of covid-19 illness in children to adults. Just because adults tend to get far sicker than children doesn’t mean that covid-19 in kids is benign. Indeed, a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis found that, during August and September, covid-19 was the sixth-leading cause of death among children ages 5 to 15.

Imagine a disease that only impacts young children. Imagine that thousands of previously healthy kids have been afflicted, that more than 100 have died and that many more are living with long-term consequences. Wouldn’t developing a vaccine to protect our children from this disease be a top priority?

Pfizer’s vaccine appears to do exactly that. Its study of more than 2,250 children ages 5 to 11 found that a 10-microgram dose (compared to 30 micrograms that’s given to 12-year-olds and above) produces a strong antibody response, including against the delta variant. It is more than 90 percent effective in preventing disease. Side effects are similar to older age groups, with common symptoms being sore arm, fatigue and fever.

Importantly, the study found no cases of myocarditis, or inflammation of the heart muscle. This does not mean that myocarditis won’t surface among a much larger group of children. As the FDA advisers reviewed in extensive detail, myocarditis is a known adverse reaction associated with the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, and is most prevalent in young males under 30. Myocarditis cases associated with the vaccines tend to be mild and resolve on their own, with the majority having no long-term effects. Medical groups have resoundingly noted that the benefit of the vaccine far outweighs the risk of myocarditis in adolescents.

Extending inoculations to the younger age group has the added benefit of helping the community. Kids can and do transmit covid-19 in school and home settings, and getting millions of children vaccinated can help reduce the coronavirus’s overall burden. But the main reason to authorize vaccines for young kids is not an altruistic one of safeguarding other vulnerable people; it’s to protect the kids themselves. It’s to give parents peace of mind to return to the office and travel without the constant worry of bringing the coronavirus back to their kids. And it is to reduce missed school days, as current protocols from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that vaccinated people do not need to quarantine if exposed to covid-19.

Moreover, inoculating younger children will give them the freedom that they have been missing. To reduce unnecessary risk, many parents have been putting extracurricular activities on hold. Once kids are vaccinated, sports and after-school activities can safely resume. Families who have exercised caution by stopping sleepovers and indoor birthday parties can bring these back knowing that the risk is now much lower. Activities with all vaccinated children can probably do away with masks, giving kids another layer of normalcy.

Our kids have suffered enough because of covid-19. Having the vaccine available for all school-aged children will safeguard their health and allow them to return to their pre-pandemic lives, and I hope the FDA and CDC will act expeditiously to make this happen.

More On Stoopid

This time we go back to Dietrich Bonhoeffer:

“There is meaning in every journey that is unknown

to the traveler.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer