In a blow to a key element of the White House’s plan to address the pandemic as cases resulting from the Omicron variant are on the rise, the conservative majority in the U.S. Supreme Court voted 6-3, with the three liberal justices dissenting, to block a vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers.
I guess the Founding Fathers didn’t have the foresight to write into the U.S. Constitution that the federal government has the right to take steps to stem the tide of an out-of-control pandemic that has infected millions of Americans and cost the lives of close to a million.
It seems that the justices in the high court value the freedom of Americans to be a self-indulgent idiots over the health and welfare of the country’s citizenry.
In a somewhat related story, I saw this today on a local neighborhood message exchange app:
The Lord didn’t call this guy home. As the next to the last line said, “Ultimately, his decision to be unvaccinated cost him his life.” If anything, the lord called and said, “You reap what you sow, dummy.”
And in other depressing news…
Kyrsten Sinema publicly and bluntly reaffirmed she would not support any change to the filibuster rules on Thursday, effectively killing her party’s hope of passing the most sweeping voting rights protections in a generation.
It’s so sad that one person in the U.S. Senate can stand in the way of assuring the right to vote for 300 million America citizens.
This, That, and the Other 
I saw that headline when I woke up, and yesterday it was the McCarthy nonsense. He clearly has something to hide if he is refusing to cooperate with the House Committee for the January 6th terrorist attack. Amy Coney Barrett is a disgrace to the SC. I am sure all of these decisions have a lot to do with her BS.
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A “regular” person would be in jail. So what’s up judicial system??
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Exactly! To be honest, the judicial system works exactly how the upper class want it to. Condemn the poor and make the rich richer…no accountability for the privileged.
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As a whole I agree
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It makes me sick!!
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I agree with your every word. The “supreme” court is a joke
Sent from my iPhone
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Your middle piece – the guy who died – that might be a *moot* provocative question one week. Whether any beliefs are worth dying for. I bet people will say “yes”, although I’m not so sure about whether *this* belief is.
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I was feeling bad for the guy and his family and friends until I saw that he refused to get vaccinated. After reading that I thought he made his bed and now he’ll have to lie in it…for eternity.
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If he chose not to be xaccinated, that’s basically for him and he has paid the price for his gamble. Seems like natural justice for me.
That’s fine as far as it goes, but I feel bad for the people he might have infected along that.
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Yes, I agree. Those who refuse to get vaxxed are putting countless others in jeopardy. That’s why I have no sympathy for the death of a voluntarily unvaccinated person.
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I think, in our countries at least, that by now the vast majority of people are able to take the voluntary route.
IOne of my charity clients. though, they refused to vaccinate her because she has reacted badly to flu jabs in the past. I feel for her because she has essentially been locked down for trwo years. Frankly, I don’t ever see a time when she *won’t* be locked down. I suppose an oral vaccine possibly.
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It seems we are a government of endless slip knots and loopholes. All I can manage these days are deep sighs and a feeling of hopelessness. I would love to be proven wrong.
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So would I but I think things are pretty hopeless.
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It was a very disappointing week.
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That it was.
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#DemocracyNow Confessions of a “Human Guinea Pig”: Professor Quits Vaccine Trial over Moderna’s Corporate Greed · 2 days ago
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https://www.cjonline.com/story/news/2021/11/04/kansas-gov-laura-kelly-questions-federal-worker-vaccine-mandates-biden/6288351001/
………………………….
U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration issued new rules Thursday under which Americans working at companies with 100 or more employees will need to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by Jan. 4 or get tested for the virus weekly. The rules apply to about 84 million workers, and OSHA left open the possibility of expanding the requirement to smaller businesses.
“OSHA just this morning released a 490 page document. I’m not going to pretend to have read it,” [Democrat] Kelly said. “I’m not sure that there are going to be a lot of ways that we can design this to work for Kansas. Give me a little bit of time to work on it and we will see what we can do.”
Kelly expressed frustration that last year — when Trump was president — [states] “were really literally told, ‘You are on your own.’”
“We took that and we basically developed systems and strategies that worked within our state, so at this point to have the federal government come in and say, ‘OK, now you all have to do if this way,’ is really tough to deal with,” she said.
Under a separate Biden mandate, 17 million people who work in nursing homes, hospitals and other facilities that receive money from the Medicare and Medicaid programs also must get vaccinated and don’t have a testing option. Another Biden mandate applies the same tough rule to the employees of federal government contractors.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, a Republican hoping to unseat [Democrat] Kelly in next year’s governor’s race, already has brought Kansas into a federal lawsuit filed by multiple states against the requirement for government contractors.
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https://www.cjonline.com/picture-gallery/news/local/2022/01/12/gov-laura-kelly-delivers-state-state-address-kansas-statehouse/9178083002/?itm_medium=recirc&itm_source=taboola&itm_campaign=internal&itm_content=ExploreMore
Kansas Governor Laura Kelly [Democrat] delivers State of the State address
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https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/mixed-bag-kansas-officials-respond-000030758.html
‘A mixed bag’: Kansas officials respond to Supreme Court halting one Biden vaccine rule, upholding another
Andrew Bahl, Jason Tidd and John Fritze, USA TODAY
Fri, January 14, 2022, 10:05 AM·6 min read
In this article:
Joe Biden Joe Biden 46th and current president of the United States
Laura Kelly 48th and current governor of Kansas
The Supreme Court on Thursday halted enforcement of one of President Joe Biden’s signature efforts to combat COVID-19, ruling on a lawsuit Kansas participated in challenging his administration’s authority to impose vaccine-or-testing requirements on employers that would have covered tens of millions of Americans.
The unsigned opinion, which came days after the justices heard arguments in the emergency appeal, marked the second time the nation’s highest court unwound a pandemic policy of the Biden administration, again concluding that federal officials exceeded the power given to them by Congress. The court blocked Biden’s eviction moratorium in August, ruling that it also was an overreach.
The court in a second unsigned opinion permitted a vaccine mandate on people employed at health care facilities that receive federal funding through Medicare and Medicaid. That measure, which takes effect this month, affects about 10 million workers.
…………………
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https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/the-supreme-courts-vexing-mixed-message-on-vaccine-mandates
……….
It should be noted, first of all, that neither of these decisions stands as a final ruling on the constitutionality of vaccine mandates. The basic question in both cases is whether the mandates could go into effect while challenges proceed through the lower courts. (Following the rulings, one can and the other can’t.) But the decisions give some idea of where the Court stands. The Medicare-Medicaid mandate was always seen as being on less contested ground than the osha rule—and this outcome was fairly clearly previewed by the Justices’ questions in oral arguments in the cases last week.
…………………
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On Thursday, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4 decision in the case of Biden v. Missouri, allowed the Department of Health and Human Services to begin [or continue] implementing a covid-19-vaccine mandate for workers at health-care facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid funds. The Justices signing on to the opinion were Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan, and Sonia Sotomayor—the Court’s liberal nub—plus Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts. The dissenters were Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas. That mandate is expected to cover some ten million workers, and, given the Omicron surge, could hardly come soon enough. (The majority opinion mentions health-care facilities where thirty-five per cent of the workers are unvaccinated.) On the same day, though………………………………….
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The news is far too depressing to follow. There is one tragedy after another.
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Indeed. 😖
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https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/sotomayor-100k-children-covid/?cx_testId=2&cx_testVariant=cx_1&cx_artPos=3#cxrecs_s
Correct Attribution: Context
During a Supreme Court hearing on Jan. 7, 2022, Sotomayor falsely stated that 100,000 U.S. children are in serious condition with COVID-19, with many on ventilators. Actual government figures indicate that fewer than 5,000 children in the U.S. are currently hospitalized with COVID-19, though in recent weeks the rate of pediatric hospitalizations had seen its most rapid increase of the entire pandemic.
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https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house/watch/fissures-appear-among-the-supreme-court-conservative-justices-131147845984
Fissures appear among the Supreme Court conservative justices
– Former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance and executive director of Demand Justice Brian Fallon on new reporting detailing how Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch was the only justice to refuse to wear a mask, and how reporting like this further diminishes trust in the court –
This is quite infuriating.
Aired Jan. 18, 2022
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Robby Soave: L[egacy] Media PUSHED Debunked SCOTUS Mask Story. Sotomayor, Roberts, & Gorsuch DENY · 4 hours ago
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https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pfizer-ceo-vaccine-covid-limited-protection/
What’s True In an interview on Jan. 10, 2022, Bourla said the existing two-dose Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine offered “very limited protection, if any.” However…
What’s False Bourla was referring specifically to infection from the omicron variant of COVID-19, not COVID-19 in general.
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… Doctor[s] Comes [Come] to Podcaster’s Defense, Legacy Media Explodes …
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I sure did not know Brianna Keilar (CNN) was born in Australia; found out when I looked up the spelling for her name just now. In her defense, my guess is she was told what attitude to take on her face while reading the story off the prompter (that she was not, herself, familiarized with the content or facts). And, of course, CNN (who tell her the attitudes) know online content is competition for their ratings, advertising dollars, and (corporate) agenda. [Anyway, what a coincidence that the fella in the “Pre-infection” (below) answer had a question from an Australian.]
It might seem odd, but there are MSNBC hosts who have said, recently, that everyone is going to get the newer strand of Covid (Omicron); that you don’t shut down commerce or schools for something like that like the flu. Chris Hayes, for instance. I wonder if it would be possible to find that, now, if I looked for it.
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Posted on YouTube, yesterday: While much of the media this week has claimed that ‘270 doctors’ demanded Spotify take action over Joe Rogan podcasts. It turns out, most aren’t medical doctors. So, what’s this really about?
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Pre-infection Advice
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The last eleven minutes, or so, of this twenty-nine minutes is from somone in and about Panama as well as seafarers (and seafarers gaining access of vaccination by obtaining a first shot in one nation and the second in another).
I don’t necessarily agree with everything each of these men say, but they are interesting.
Omicron, when to be exposed · 9 hours ago
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Revisiting the Snopes “fact check” (link posted above): In January 2022, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla said the company’s two-dose vaccine offered limited or no protection against COVID-19.
In an interview on Jan. 10, 2022, Bourla said the existing two-dose Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine offered “very limited protection, if any.” However…
{… added that they will be coming out with an Omicron-specific (covid) vaccine, hopefully, perhaps in the spring. This was not shared, at Snopes, for the review of the claim.}
… Bourla was referring specifically to infection from the omicron variant [the current iteration] of COVID-19, not COVID-19 in general.
{Therefore, I find the Snopes treatment of the topic misleading, especially for their opening statement; the opening statement (which I didn’t quote but is at the link) is a piece of misdirection. The full interview is available for anyone who wants to know what he focuses on. I’m pretty sure it was on CNBC — you know — the medical channel. 🙄}
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/covid-vaccine-pfizer-ceo-says-omicron-vaccine-will-be-ready-in-march.html
Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told CNBC earlier Monday the company is working on a booster for this fall that targets omicron and it will enter clinical trials soon. Bancel said demand is high from governments as they prepare regular vaccination against the virus.
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Israeli 4th Shot Trial FAILS, “Not Good Enough” Against Omicron. WHO Says Kids DON’T Need Booster · 3 days ago
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All caps “WHO” isn’t just an emphasis (nor emphasized question); it’s the World Health Organization — there’s a statement from the major organization. So, these are two related but separate subjects. WHO and Israel are conducting different overview activities.
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/pfizer-ceo-says-two-covid-vaccine-doses-arent-enough-for-omicron.html
Bourla, in an interview at JPMorgan’s health-care conference, emphasized ..… omicron is a more difficult target than previous variants. Omicron, which has dozens of mutations, can evade some of the protection provided by Pfizer’s original two shots.
“We have seen with a second dose very clearly that the first thing that we lost was the protection against infections,” Bourla said. “But then two months later, what used to be very strong in hospitalization also went down. And I think this is what everybody’s worried about.”
Real-world data from the United Kingdom has found that two vaccine doses are 52% effective at preventing hospitalization 25 weeks after receiving the second shot [note almost exactly 50/50], according to data from the U.K. Health Security Agency.
Two-doses of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccines are only about 10% effective at preventing infection [infection, asymptomatic and symptomatic] from omicron 20 weeks after the second dose, according to the U.K. data.
A booster dose, on the other hand, is up to 75% effective at preventing symptomatic infection [not an apples and apples comparison] and 88% effective at preventing hospitalization, according to the data. [This last item sounds significant.]
However, Bourla said it’s unclear how long a booster dose will provide protection………. [This article is a mix of things CNBC is saying and things he, Bourla, actually said. Bourla included a sober thought that an omicron-specific booster, or any additional boosting, might not be truly called for. (Note that Pfizer is taking Israel’s data seriously, Israel having been using the Pfizer vaccine. And the recommendations are to be a weighing of risk from vaccination for a person [and demographics of people such as according to age and other variables] versus risk from infection.)
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https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/10/first-on-cnbc-cnbc-transcript-pfizer-chairman-and-ceo-albert-bourla-speaks-with-cnbcs-squawk-box-today.html
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https://www.cnbc.com/video/2022/01/10/watch-cnbcs-full-interview-with-pfizer-ceo-albert-bourla.html
Watch CNBC’s full interview with Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla sits down with CNBC’s Meg Tirrell and the ‘Squawk Box’ team to discuss the company’s Covid-19 vaccine booster strategy, including a potential shot targeting the omicron variant. Bourla lays out how many doses of the company’s highly anticipated Covid-19 pill, known as Paxlovid, Pfizer will be able to produce in the months ahead. Bourla also breaks down the company’s trio of mRNA deals announced on Monday. MON, JAN 10 202210:44 AM EST
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Trump, DeSantis Headed For All-Out War In 2024? (And Williamson with Yang Trash Two-Party Duopoly)
Streamed earlier Today
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I’m not sure why… but one of the most interesting segments on Deadline Whitehouse, today, isn’t getting put onto the website, yet, to share. The full episode will be up, for a limited time, at some point; I’ll keep my eyes open for that. Here’s a piece that is that best I can do for now.
https://mobile.twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1483597686481858562?cxt=HHwWhMC9xYiP5pYpAAAA
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Both of these quotations have video clips at the Twitter links:
“What’s happening is utterly ridiculous, I can’t even describe it any plainer than that. It’s almost… an effort against minority voters period and I am alarmed at what’s happening here in Florida in the legislature” – FL State Sen. Audrey Gibson w/
@NicolleDWallace [on Deadline White House]
https://mobile.twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1483600215345143808? cxt=HHwWgIC5haKi55YpAAAA
“That’s what I worry about the most… is that voter suppression is the new normal in the Republican Party, the Big Lie is the new normal in the Republican Party… The extremists have hijacked one political party” – @AriBerman w/ @NicolleDWallace
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It’s there, now: the full episode (after you click on FULL EPISODES) for 01/18/2012. But one has to set up an “NBCUniversal Profile” in order to “Unlock” said “MSNBC content” (which is free to do but requires your first and last name and birthday with email address). As originally aired, the multipart piece I’m referencing began halfway through the show. It began with footage of DeSantis, in November of 2020, saying,
“The way Florida did it, I think that’s how elections should be run…”
Preceded by, so really starting with footage of a “ghost” comment that seemed weird to me, already, when he first said it [but my guess is he was suggesting, by way of reminder, how powerful his state is].
https://floridapolitics.com/archives/381281-bush-v-gore-no-more-ron-desantis-says-florida-might-have-vanquished-the-ghost/
Nicolle: “… saying it inspired confidence. So why, in the year since DeSantis made those comments, has he felt the need to reform his state’s elections in the name of ‘election integrity’?”
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“Back in May …” he did something that he signed for the camera on Fox News.
https://www.msnbc.com/deadline-white-house
And now (the following headlines were on Nicolle’s screen):
The Washington Post: Florida governor proposes special police agency to monitor elections
Lori Rozsa and Beth [I didn’t get her last name down, yesterday]
POLITICO: DeSantis muscles in on redistricting
GARY FINEOUT
The New York Times: Who Is King of Florida? Tensions Rise Between Trump and a Former Acolyte.
Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman
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Here’s another article I found on my own, like I did the floridapolitics archives one:
https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/11/05/even-if-trump-loses-desantis-is-a-winner-1334123
11/05/2020 05:03 AM EST TALLAHASSEE — He wasn’t on the ballot, but Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday became one of the big winners of the 2020 presidential race.
The Donald Trump ally helped deliver the president’s must-win state and in the process cemented his own legacy as a leading “Make America Great Again” luminary.
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