CoffeeTiger

https://www.al.com/news/2021/04/which-district-attorneys-in-alabama-are-pushing-to-block-medical-marijuana.html Yeah, F*** anyone in chronic pain who doesn't want to destroy their bodies and become dependent and addicted to powerful pharmaceutical pain killers. Great plan and message. Very on brand for Alabama. Who thinks this bill will actually pass? I'm hopeful but will be surprised if it does. *Just as a note I've never had any kind of marijuana and have no plans to have it, but I fully support people's rights to choose to take it, especially since it's proven to be safer and less harmful than legal drugs like tobacco and alcohol.

Likely not many places in the U.S., but if you plan to travel outside of the U.S., many other countries will probably require proof of vaccination for you to enter.

Yep, and when Saban does do something (like marching with his players for BLM), it may anger a portion of the Alabama fan base for a short while, but increases his players and potential recruits opinions of him.

I think the leaders are still wearing a mask to be an example for the nation 'We're not asking you to do something that we ourselves aren't doing' About Half the eligible nations population is still unvaccinated, so it's not like we are now 100% home free and done with the virus. It's still out there and a lot of people are still susceptible to it, so people like Biden and Fauci are still encouraging mask use till that # is higher. Polls are still showing that about 40% of Republicans are still refusing the vaccine and a lot of the group likely includes older people. But you are right, eventually everyone will stop wearing masks and social distancing due to wide spread vaccination and we'll just have to accept that there will continue to be spreading and deaths among the anti-vax Conservatives, but at least there will be more protection for the population at large by that stage.

https://apnews.com/article/health-education-bills-religion-effb3142e275f9f7616b99d7babcceab Connecticut is considering ending it's religious vaccination exemption law because of the increasing number of parents using the religious loophole to get out of vaccinating their children entirely.

The Right supported Jim Crow laws, segregation, and mistreatment of Blacks for decades...some still do The Right supports the complete ban of Abortion because a woman shouldn't be able to choose if the fetus inside of her grows into a baby or not. The Right supports limited access to contraceptives and limiting sex education for public school students (teens wont have sex if they don't even know that sex exists or how to do it) The Right supports mandating Christian symbolism and principles all throughout the government. (Christian monuments in government buildings, Christian prayers in school, Christian beliefs being taught in public schools, etc). If you think christian prayer shouldn't be in public schools, the right calls you a religious persecutor and 'everything that is wrong with the country' The Right absolutely opposes any of that stuff I mentioned above for any other religion or belief that isn't Christianity. The Right hates for anyone to kneel while the national anthem plays because they consider it treason against the State. Protesting is only permitted on the terms that the Right deems appropriate. The Right supports gay conversion therapy and programs designed to turn gay or trans people back into more model Christian citizens The Right, until just recently, universally opposed gay marriage and relationships, because...sin..families..hate The Right traditionally doesn't look favorably upon inter racial relationships. The Right opposes legal prostitution...because again....limiting when and who can have sex. The Right opposes the legalization of safe, recreational drugs. But other than all that, sure, the 'Right' loves personal freedom and liberty for all the white, straight,Christian, natural born Americans they represent.

I mean it's not as if police training is overly rigorous or consistent. You can qualify to be a cop without even having a HS diploma. Just take a small skills test, then you have About 13~ weeks of police academy, a short period of on job training, and then maybe a few hours of refresher courses every year or so? Nobody really knows exactly because every department in every city in every state has different training requirements and different requirements for refresher training. You can get through police training and be on the streets by yourself faster than you can get through cosmetology school and be licensed to legally cut hair.

https://www.al.com/news/2021/04/columbus-ohio-police-fatally-shoot-makhia-bryant-16-release-body-cam-footage.html Another police killing, this time a 16 yo girl that was swinging around a little knife in a fight with another girl. Cops shows up on the scene, gets out of his car, pulls out his gun and just pops her 4 times. The fight had already been going on for a while before the cop arrived and nobody had been killed or wounded by the girl yet. He Couldn't think of another way to disarm an emotionally charged teenage girl? It's like the cops in Grand Theft Auto that'll gun you down for running a red light lol.

Interesting trial to follow. Surprised he was guilty of all 3. Probably having a younger, more diverse jury is what helped lead to that quick outcome.

It's a tough situation for sure. I have no idea what I would have done in the kid's shoes at that exact situation. Adrenalin and heart rate pumping, cop with a gun pointed at you yelling orders....I very well might have been of mind that the best thing to do would be to toss the gun to get it as far away from me as quick as possible. I don't think it's obvious that the cop acted recklessly here, but it's also not 100% clear in my mind that this shooting could be considered justified. It looks like the kid WAS complying with the cops order, but I guess he wasn't complying correctly, or was complying too fast...i don't know.

Well, the guy in the top picture is John Bennette https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_R._Bennett who is on record that he hates Muslims and would absolutely hate the people in the bottom picture. It's very likely his wife agrees with his views and it's also just as likely he's spreading his hate on to his children. You can make whatever inference you want on the photo.....I just find the similarities to be amusing.

Eh, both groups hate each other, both feel completely justified in their hatred, and both are brainwashed by a combination of blind nationalism and a militant interpretation of their respective Religious beliefs. and as an aside, I didn't know it when i posted the picture originally, but apparently the Family in the top picture is the Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman John Bennette. Who likes to rage against the evils of Islam and said that Hillary Clinton should be executed for being a traitor....so a swell guy overall.

Interesting how 2 cultures can be so very different...yet so very similar.

No, it is true and I have Trumps own words as proof. Would you next like to claim that H2O is not in fact water, or that gravity really doesn't exist?

If our politicians faced jailtime for Covid deaths caused by their carelessness then Donald Trump would be facing multiple life sentences right now for spending half the pandemic claiming that COVID was a nothingburger that was going to just disappear any day. That said, I don't like nor care for Cuomo, and wish he would resign. I also don't care one bit if he does go to jail or face punishment for nursing home deaths. My point being that Republicans don't give a sh*t about who or how many people have died from Covid unless they can specifically pin deaths on a democrat or on minorities they don't like. That's the only time Republicans care about Covid, otherwise it's just the common cold and masks are useless, say no to any shutdowns, best to just let everyone get it to create heard immunity, etc.... till a covid case can be linked to a democrat or Hispanic immigrant, then the GOP is all hands on deck for prevention and justice.

didn't take long after the first couple of allegations of inappropriate contact or crude talking came out. Gatze has been under investigation for a period of time for actual sex trafficking underaged girls to have sex with. I know most Republicans will pretend like the Cuomo and Gatz situations are apples to apples comparison, but one is klooking at being fired, the other is looking at hardcore federal prison.

So lets compare Cuomo specifically since that is the most recent and relevant comparison on the Democrats side: We have a host of Democratic congressional legislators demanded that Cuomo resign even before the completion of a formal investigation. Here's a full long list of the many democrats who are demanding his ouster (https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/everyone-calling-for-cuomo-resign.html) So with Matt Gatz, despite it being known that he isn't popular within the Republican party and a lot of people seem to outright don't want to be associated with him before all this came out, who exactly in the GOP has come out with any strong language against him so far? Senate GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy has said he wants to see the investigation play out, but that he wont remove Gatz from committee assignments in the meantime. Taylor-Greene the popular GOP QCumber has outright came out in support of Gatz full throttle. Another GOPer accused of supporting sexual misconduct, Jim Jordan, is also publicly supporting Gatz, but Few if any Republicans are actually voicing out against Gatz as it appears. Not a great look when you have more GOPers defending Gatz instead of publicly voicing concerns or coming out against him. Majority of the GOP seems to just feel the best thing to do is keep quiet and pretend nothing is happening.

This is getting Spicy,

This is a developing story that is getting weirder by the moment! Stay Tuned: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/31/matt-gaetz-allegation-explained/ There aren’t many members of Congress whose personal lives are the subject of broad speculation. But for a variety of reasons, Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) has been for some time. One is that he’s a young and handsome bachelor, part of a handful of House members whose constant appearances on conservative cable television have earned him national attention. Another is that Gaetz has both intentionally and unintentionally stoked that interest, first with rumored love interests, then an announced engagement and most unusually, the revelation last year that he has a teenage son (who is his son neither biologically nor legally). So when the New York Times reported Tuesday evening that the Justice Department was investigating Gaetz in relation to what he describes as a past relationship, the story quickly blew up. Then things got weird … er. Let us explain. What is alleged? “The Justice Department is investigating Rep. Matt Gaetz — a Florida Republican considered a close political ally of former president Donald Trump — over an alleged sexual relationship with an underage girl,” The Washington Post’s Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett explain. That relationship allegedly included paying for the girl to travel, potentially across state lines, adding the complexity of potential federal charges related to sex trafficking, according to the Times. Both the Post and Times stories are constrained for fairly obvious reasons, including the limits of available information and the need to accurately convey the potential risk Gaetz faces. The investigation apparently spun out of another sex-trafficking probe in Florida. That one focused on a former county official named Joel Greenberg, who was charged in the summer with a number of federal offenses, including sex trafficking of a minor. “According to an indictment in the case, Greenberg abused his access to a statewide database, using it to look up the personal information of people with whom he was in 'sugar daddy' relationships, including the minor, and to help produce fake identification documents to 'facilitate his efforts to engage in commercial sex acts,' " Zapotosky and Barrett report. “He was also accused of seeking to undermine a political opponent by surfacing fabricated evidence of racism and misconduct.” It's worth noting that questions about Gaetz's relationships have emerged in the past. A Mother Jones article from 2019 documents concerns raised by a former member of Gaetz's staff about a 21-year-old he was then dating and who was apparently posting photos of the two of them on Instagram alongside other photos showing not-conservative-politician-friendly activities. What does Gaetz say happened? Gaetz’s initial response to the Times focused on the travel aspect of the allegation, telling the paper that while he only knew that the investigation “has to do with women,” his suspicion was that “someone is trying to recategorize my generosity to ex-girlfriends as something more untoward.” He later told the paper that it was “verifiably false” that he had traveled with a minor. Over the next few hours, though, his claims got much more complicated. He appeared on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show to explain his side of the story. Here's what he said, in full. Gaetz later looped Carlson into the allegations. “You and I went to dinner about two years ago,” Gaetz said. “Your wife was there, and I brought a friend of mine. You’ll remember her. And she was actually threatened by the FBI, told that if she wouldn’t cop to the fact that somehow I was involved in some pay-for-play scheme, that she could face trouble.” Carlson said he didn’t remember that dinner. He also asked Gaetz when the congressman first learned of the investigation, without receiving a specific answer. Does Gaetz's story hold up? It's hard to say, given the, shall we say, complexity of Gaetz's allegation. (Carlson himself described the interaction as “one of the weirdest interviews I've ever conducted.”) Gaetz apparently shared messages and documents supporting his claims with Axios's Jonathan Swan, though Swan didn't offer details on what that material indicated. During the Fox News interview, Gaetz identified the former official as David McGee. McGee spoke with The Post about the charge, saying that Gaetz’s father, Don Gaetz, had reached out to him. (The elder Gaetz is a former Florida politician who became rich after selling a hospice company he had co-founded.) “It is completely false. It’s a blatant attempt to distract from the fact that he’s under investigation for sex trafficking of minors,” McGee told The Post. He said he had no connection to the case other than being “one of a thousand people who have heard the rumors.” Weren't there just reports about Gaetz leaving Congress? Yep. Earlier Tuesday, news broke that Gaetz was thinking of resigning from the House to take a job in conservative media. Outside of the context that emerged with the reported investigation, the story made some sense. Gaetz has been on Fox News an average of 87 minutes a month over the past 12 months; for a low-ranking member of the minority party with an affection for the spotlight to make such a transition wouldn’t be a shock. With the new revelation, though, that story takes on a different color: Was that rumor floated simply as cover for Gaetz to resign for other reasons? (It’s worth noting that resignations from positions of power can be part of plea agreements.) Once we’re reconsidering Gaetz’s willingness to walk away from Congress, we might reconsider his offer in early February to resign from Congress to aid Trump’s impeachment defense. Was the impetus for that attention or, even then, some form of self-preservation? Did Gaetz have any very specific tweets or actions that now take on another, unflattering light? Why, yes! Gaetz is a prolific user of social media and the kind of social media user who alternately deploys it for jokes or as a cudgel. So we get jokes like this one from 2019, which age particularly poorly. More curious was this one, which came after Gaetz himself acknowledges being familiar with the reported investigation. Then there was his unusual vote on a bill focused on combating sex trafficking during his first year in Congress. The bill passed by a 418-to-1 vote — with Gaetz offering the only “nay.” “Unless there is an overwhelming, compelling reason that our existing agencies in the federal government can’t handle that problem,” he later explained, “I vote no because voters in Northwest Florida did not send me to Washington to go and create more federal government.” What’s the political fallout? If Gaetz does resign, there’s no real risk that the GOP would lose his seat. Gaetz has won by at least 30 points in each of his reelection bids, and Trump won the district by more than 30 points last year. But Gaetz’s position is shaky. The allegations are of a sort that makes it very difficult for his colleagues to come to his defense. Perhaps they believe his claims that he’s a target of extortion — a sort of countercharge that in the past has often turned out to be untrue. But there’s an obvious political risk to vocally defending someone who might face sex-trafficking charges, so expect his political allies (including the former president) to remain fairly muted. That’s particularly true, Insider reports, because Gaetz isn’t particularly well-liked by his colleagues. One called him “the meanest person in politics.” Perhaps Gaetz can turn that to his defense. After all, if no one likes him much, wouldn’t that make it more possible that they might try to extort him?

Do you know how crazy this sounds? The world is going through a global pandemic that every nation is having to take steps to combat, and you really believe these preventative/protection steps are part of some grand conspiracy to strip you of your human rights? You think scientists and governments are collaborating in dark, secret rooms to make up stories about the virus just so they can make you wear a paper mask or get some vaccine shot that'll have Bill Gates monitoring system in it? What's the deal here? Of course there are some healthcare officials who have different ideas. That's how science operates. And if you think they are being censored then the secret cabal isn't doing a very good job about it since you say that guy is widely cited and you know about him and what he says. I also don't know what you mean by the CDC and WHO leaders becoming celebrities. I know a lot of conservatives seem to have a deep seeded hatred for Fauci in particular...but it's a once in a 100 years pandemic..of course disease scientists will be the center of attention. I don't know why you think it's such a bad idea for experts in infections diseases to lead the effort against a..infectious disease. They also don't have that much power. Individual states and governments make most of the restrictions and many are loosening up now in direct contradiction to Fauci and the CDC's advice so I don't know what power you're afraid they wont give up.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/03/30/dont-believe-conservative-fearmongering-over-vaccine-passports/

Got my first Moderna shot today. Just a bit of soreness in the arm for an hour is all it did to me.

The original "no masks needed" guidance was a well documented mistake and was wrong advice that was given early on (March 8 in fact is when Fauci said it in a 60 minuets interview) before much at all was known about the virus and the government was concerned about a lack of PPE availability for hospitals/nursing homes and the like if the entire US population rushed to buy up masks all at once. After this interview and after the CDC updated it's guidelines Fauci did start recommending wearing masks and saying they were important the following month in April. He did change on that one issue, but after recommending masks be worn, he has stayed consistent with that recommendation ever sense. Because at the time he was the only person high up in the Trump Administration that was actually telling the truth about what the virus was and what was likely going to happen and what would be needed to stop it. Trump went on the record multiple, multiple times saying the Virus wouldn't be an issue, would go away magically without needing any real precautions and that there was nothing to be concerned about. That was all 100% false information that Trump was giving Americans. Fauci was doing a service by being a counterpoint of reason during the chaos. It amuses me when Trump supporters dog Fauci for "loving the spotlight" and just wanting to be in front of the camera, when that is Trump's entire personality is centered around his desire to be in front of a camera and to be the center of attention in everything. That's why Trump always referneced crowd sizes and television views/ratings so often. He views success by how many people are watching you. His supporters love it when Trump does it, but when a scientist steps up to contradict Trump and suddenly its the scientist that has 'suspicious motivations', and they can't trust him because it's apparently so weird to see the nations top disease expert give so many interviews in the middle of a global pandemic. I'll say with honesty that I'm not sure what other scientist you are referencing. I know that one doctor in Texas that Conservatives loved because she liked hydroxychloroquine and said she could cure people of Covid or something. She's also the one that believed in the lizard people conspiracy and that we were being incriminated with demon sperm or something. I'm surprised she wasn't hired by the GOP to be their chief 'alternative' medicine expert. I also know that Dennis Prager last year had various videos with this unemployed, Russian ex-doctor that looked like he hadn't shaved in years, to get on his program and talk about how Fauci was wrong about everything and that hydroxychloroquine was the future or whatever. I haven't seen Prager bring him back up in a while though. I think that the experts are right that we need to hold out just a bit longer till the vaccine has been more widely distributed. There is going to be a bigger infection increase and more deaths than needed because places are opening back up and people are feeling more secure even though only about 28% of the national population has been vaccinated. It feels a bit premature to jump the gun on reopening right as we're at the end point of hopefully having it all contained. The 'immigrants spreading the virus' is just another GOP strawman argument. Same as when it was "immigrants are killing and raping Americans" or "immigrants are taking all our jobs" Anytime there is a problem the Republicans ALWAYS try to make immigrants a scapegoat. I agree immigrants should be adequately tested, but the Republicans making such a big deal about it is hilarious since most officials who bring this point up also proclaim out the other side of their mouth that don't believe the virus is a big deal or that preventative measures should be taken.

Things change. Remember when the entirety of the GOP was telling everyone that the virus was either 1)A fake hoax that doesn't exists. 2) Very minor. no worse than a slight flu. 3) Bragged about how low the total numbers and deaths in the US were early on to justify not needing masks or social distancing, or any precautions what so ever? People rag on Fauci and other scientist for not knowing exactly what the world was dealing with from day one and use that as a justification for not believing anything they say in the future, but in my view their predictions and assessments were much more accurate from day one than what the "other side" were giving us.