91 Comments
Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

(Said at the outset that they were going to politicize COVID because they politicize everything, and I hate being proved right in this case.)

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agree with the being proved right. but it's akin to being proved right that---once again!-- two plus two equal four.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

1. There's a problem. 2. A group of sensible people say, "Why don't we do something about said problem?" 3. There's a debate about what to do. But it should be obvious by now that the "other side" in that debate is totally, 100%, focused on points-scoring, and the problem that triggered the debate isn't real to them, not in the way that making some lib-owning wisecrack in a chat room is real to them.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

For some reason, the phrase “submit to the vaccination” in the plaintiff’s argument jumps out at me. Yes, yes, I know conservatives have become cultists, and their resistance is being propelled by tribal affiliation. But if you step on a rusty nail, are you “submitting” when you get a shot to prevent tetanus? When your child receives the polio vaccine, have you “submitted” them to the tyranny of the Librul Medical Health Peddlers? Will iron lungs become a new symbol of patriotism in red states?

We are so, so fucked.

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perhaps not 'we' so much as 'they'.

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Nothing says Freedom like an iron lung.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Every time I open a faucet, I am submitted to the tyranny that is Clean Water.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

FDA regulations for the safe and sanitary transport of food products: who do they think they are? What's their REAL agenda?

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

"This offer void in Flint, Michigan and Jackson, Mississippi."

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<Comment about Trump et al. seeing the world as made-up of either dominators or the dominated.>

You would submit to 'being cut for stoan', which (after learning about it in Neal Stephenson's "Baroque Sequence") I've recently encountered a few times in "The Mystery of the Exploding Teeth" (_not_ an Goon Show episode), which makes it sound like it was amazingly harrowing but actually had a half-decent survival rate.

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Goodness! When you rake that muck you don't 't mess around.

I was thinking this morning that when they ban abortion folks are going to turn their newly developed mad research skills to find a new and different set of home remedies at TSC and it's going to be a bloody shitshow within days.

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dr. oz will show them the way!

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

No doubt.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

“Senator Dr. Oz” - the blood chills at the thought. Oz and Rand in the well of the Senate tag-teaming lies about Fauci!

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Oprah Winfrey has A LOT to answer for, in this life or the next.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Cannot believe this grifting doofus has entered the Senate race in my state. Or I guess I should say, OF COURSE he has. He should do well in the "Alabama in between" part of Pennsylvania.

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Hey, he been onna tv and ain't that enuf? Worked fer the ornge doofus.

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Dr Oz or Peter Frampton?

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Ivermectin and MMS. Accent on "bloody".

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you can't prevent people from killing themselves or other people. however, one hopes that we will not be prevented from prosecuting these crimes. and if it does come to pass that people begin to flee to the cities for their health, let the walls finally be built---around the cities. i love the country, and have lived in very rural areas for a majority of my life, deep red areas, but much of that enjoyment has been negated by the increasingly ignorant and aggressive nature of the lifelong residents of those areas.

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Me too. It’s dispiriting to see increasing numbers of people who used to be good and decent (or at least took the trouble to act that way) turn into hateful, bigoted loons from a combination of 1) despair at rural America drying up and 2) decades of Republican brain poison.

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I wonder if the two factors are related?

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Republicans are just exploiting an opportunity. Most social structures don't go gentle into that good night. If it wasn't Republicans it would be organized crime or some church or other exploiting that resource. That's what Americans do.

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The drying up of rural America is a consequence of the free market liking its customers and workers to be concentrated rather than spread out. Sadly, Rural America is infected by a brain worm that tells them the free market can never be wrong and government intervention in the market - even when it would help them - must be opposed because FREEDOM.

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It’s also due to increasing industrialization of agriculture and slim profit margins requiring ever-larger farms and fewer workers.

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Rural Wisconsin voted for Scott Walker in big numbers, so he repaid the favor by loosening regulations on mega-hog farms. A hollowed-out local economy and pig shit in your drinking water, please Sir may we have some more?

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The free market could give a duck where it's customers live. People have been fleeing the country for the city since the Industrial Revolution caught on, because how you gonna keep 'em down on the farm, after they've seen indoor plumbing and a 12 hour work day.

A lot of the mythology of America, the Brand, has been about how Farmers and Small Towns are the Soul of America. Only they have a mystic bond with the Founders and the Ideals embodied in the Constitution. The immigrant scrum in the cities don't matter, they have no souls as Don Corleone said. The Republican Party and Nashville have been hammering that meme for decades, though after seeing Lil Naz X's numbers, they've been carefully promoting some black country singers. Now That's the Free Market!

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"The immigrant scrum in the cities don't matter, they have no souls as Don Corleone said."

Ummm... wasn't Corleone an immigrant himself? Was he just a hypocrite, or am I missing something here?

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That's the, I said that's the joke, son.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

These Trump-McConnell Federalist judges have brought the ignorant gummit hatred from the truckstop to the bench. Walt whining to Chuck that weight limits are stealing dollars from his pocket is annoying; Doughty Robe Boy declaiming his ignorance of Supreme Court precedence for vaccine mandates is deadly.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I foresee a future of attorneys filing appeals on the grounds of “this decision is wrong on the facts and the law, and the judge is a Qanon loon.”

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Natural immunity is the best way to keep from getting the disease. Of course, you have to get the disease to get natural immunity. So suck on THAT, libtards!

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Yes, there's that ONE study from Israel! Sure, there's a buncha other studies that show the opposite, but... did I mention that ONE study from Israel?

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It’s Epidemiology by Escher.

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That's some catch, that Catch 22.

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It's the best there is.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

1. Yet again: The pandemic gets busted to an endemic or even less with ~70-72% of the global population fully vaccinated and/or people engaging in sufficient mitigation: masking, distancing, reduced going out and maintaining clean HVAC systems. As Roy notes, here in The Greatest Nation the World has Ever Known®, we're under 60 and given the state of Republican which is to say Trumpy domination you know we won't be getting to the above-noted level of efforts.

One might say that neoliberalism which is to say sociopathic greed is an additional part of the problem in the western nations: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/11/with-vaccine-fairness-china-and-russia-are-beating-the-west-.html. Of course, support for neoliberal reed is one of the great bipartisan positions for our corrupted elected officials...

2. But wait, it gets worse. SCOTUS tagged the wall, as it were, a bunch of years ago in Masterpiece Cakes giving a pretty clear sign on where the GOP scumbag majority stands on the rule of law: It's not all that binding if it interferes with party goals. Which is to say a) there's no good legal arguments against federal mandates and b) the GOP SCOTUS majority's lawlessness is trickling down to lower courts.

Awesome? No. Exceptionally awesome.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

"...If boosters are needed six months after being ‘fully vaccinated,’ then how good are the COVID-19 vaccines, and why is it necessary to mandate them?”

Some very smart people doing their best (which is pretty damn good) to protect us from an evolving threat, and here's Mister Wisecrackin' Judge throwing shade from the sidelines.

It's a fun game, and anyone can play: "If airbags are so good, why do we still have seatbelts?" or "If airbags and seatbelts are so good, how come we still have speed limits?"

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Every day, we see evidence that the highest aspiration of every "conservative" whether they be County Commissioner or Federal Judge, is a career in Observational Comedy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observational_comedy

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I know it's been years now and I should be over it, but I still feel like some kind of stunned van winkle when I see "trump-appointed federal judge" who says things like "if your vaccines are so great well then how come..." Jesus. Republicans have really turned us into the stupidest of shithole counties.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

They really haven’t quite figured out yet that they are literally killing their voting constituents? When are they actually going to figure that out that even with the gerrymandering, the only voters that may be left are the vaccinated Dems?

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If property votes, then why do there need to be living humans on that property?

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Indeed. Having both the Senate and Electoral College based on voting rights for land, not people, were baking failure into the cake from the beginning. And it’s not like the English Reform Act of 1832; we can’t adjust district boundaries to reflect current population when those boundaries are state lines. It would require amending the constitution, and I can only imagine what Dark Timeline constitution we’d get at a convention these days.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

When Wisconsin went through its state referendum on gay marriage (the forces of bigotry won that one, natch) a joke I heard among the anti-referendum folks was "Every time a hearse pulls up to a nursing home, we're up one."

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

COVID has killed nowhere near enough people to make a dent in elections. And let us not forget that ~83% of those aged 18+ have at least one dose. We'd have to have plague deaths in the range of about 20 million nationwide, almost exclusively among voting Rs, for there to be any real consequences at that level. And if that happened, we'd have other things to worry about.

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Have to agree -- & been saying similar things. If that many R's in states that have underfunded & undersupported health systems, that means a huge number of non-COVID related ailments & afflictions will probably die, and disabled people will be triaged out of existence (protocols already exist to deny these people treatment even in the best of times)...

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

The pandemic is far from over though.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Correct, but I'm conjecturing that the number of deaths needed in a short enough period of time to make a real electoral impact the likes of which you're entertaining would result in problems/crises that would likely mute the potency of any electoral advantage.

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Orrrrr that number of deaths would save Social Security...

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I may say you're a dreamer. But you're not the only one.

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The basis of COVID denial, I think, is that not enough of the chuds liable to promulgate & engage in these theories are dying (because they are generally whie, able-bodied, & affluent). They know humans are dying in mass numbers worldwide (& USian numbers are posited to be SEVERELY under-reported: six months ago studies were estimating the number was closer to a million, & when has Florida ever given a realistic death toll?) -- but the key here is that they do not consider the humans most likely to die human at all.

A statistic at best, bare, brute life at worst.

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Give them some credit. They can read the fatality rates well as anyone. It's an acceptable loss in their calculations. They're not as dumb as you want them to be, but probably more evil than you think.

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I think it's related to the fact that, say , Baptists hate each other as much as they hate us.

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And cue, whingy liberal revenge fantasies here & elsewhere in the blogosphere/Twitterverse

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Okay, forgive my saltiness, at least here -- I'm glad to see we've mostly moved past that stage.

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I shouldn't be surprised by this iteration of high-crazy Bircherism and low-country codswallop (points for that one Roy!) but I am. Thanks for the Art Fuentes link. My wife is a nurse. Now I know what to get her for Xmas.

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Gob, one of my dearest friends the other day sends me a video with the text "Watch this & tell me what u think." It's title is "Blah blah blah speaks to balh blah on why so many follow the Covid/vaxx narrative." I demur, noting that it's 30 minutes long and hosted on bitchute.com, keeping company with Alex Jones, racist scare videos, QAnon videos, alternate healing... and COVID denial. I tell her I can judge an argument by the company it keeps & anyways that site's likely to fill my phone with malware & viruses. She says, Fair, but the argument is about "collective amnesia" and the need to "seek an outside 'hero' to rule our minds rather than exercise sovereignty over self" (her words).

So, why embed in COVID denial narrative, yo? And if you're skeptical about the world that patriarchy, Christianity, & capitalism is built, why are you carrying water for the guys who Only Want More of it?

This is the scariest development of the nation's Rush to Fascism: how QAnon & propagandists have mobilized white (VERY VERY WHITE) "Alternate medicine/yoga/spirituality" communities to their purposes.

I'll miss her... she was a good friend.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Can't you see how these Big Questions your friend is asking are so much more interesting than some mundane virus that doesn't do anything except kill people in large numbers?

Simpletons like you can't do anything more than to focus, obsessively, on this "Less dead people" thing (BO-RING!) while BigBrains like your friend allow their minds to roam freely across the intellectual feast that is YouTube.

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Nice -- I like your style!

Srsly though, that exact line of inquiry is the basis of my class on ancient & medieval heroic literature. Maybe we don't need another hero.

But... um... respecting Dr Fauci or Joe Biden's efforts to protect human life in whatever flawed & incomplete ways we have at present is not the existential crisis she's making it out to be.

I pretty much realized she's a libertarian prepping for societal collapse. Next time we talk I'm going ask when she's planning to sell her children...

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Your friend's story makes me wonder how much Covid denialism (and other intellectual delights like Qanon) is driven by a need for entertainment?

Nothing less entertaining than "Guess I should just do what all the doctors recommend", especially when compared to "We're all involved in a grand struggle of good vs. evil, and I play an important role in it!" If I'm honest, I have to admit that the world I live in is a LOT less entertaining than a world where JFK Junior is still alive.

Do people today have a greater need for entertainment, to the point where their streaming services can't supply their needs, and so they have to make EVERYTHING into drama? And what insulates them from reality enough that they have the luxury of doing this?

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

This need for constant entertainment, Americans generally being a bunch of four-year-olds, is why the Biden Administration is considered "failing." Because calm competence is not as entertaining/sexy as chaos.

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Four-year-olds, teenagers...to paraphrase, "We've established what they are. Now we're merely haggling over the age."

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But you nailed it. It's not just passive entertainment. It's an exciting drama in which the audience gets to feel heroic. The fact that it's adolescent--that calling Fauci a "tyrant" is like sniggering to your teen pals that your dad's an asshole--is lost on them, of course.

The only saving grace in all this is that the subject under discussion does, under some circumstances, have the effect of killing them. It's not much, but it's something.

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author

Silver linings!

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I get why some people yearn for social collapse: they worship at the church of You're Not The Boss Of Me and believe they will thrive in a world that rewards sociopathic greed, violence, and force. But Woo People generally don't swing that way. I guess they expect that spaceship to show up when the radio and t.v. signals stop?

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

"...they worship at the church of You're Not The Boss Of Me and believe they will thrive in a world that rewards sociopathic greed, violence, and force."

You mean like the real world? The fact that they're not thriving already says a lot.

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You only get away with it if you're at the level of a Trump or Zuckerberg. The fantasy is that once the tyranny of the State is removed, every man a King! if he's man enough to grasp the nettle. Of course people who see civilization as an obstacle to be removed are a few beers short of a 18-pack.

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Hey! That's the answer...There's a whole lotta relephants in the circus.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Watching the Fox News last night, they led with a celebratory "Judge halts massive overreach of Biden vaccine mandate!" and smoothly segued into "Inept Biden FAILING to halt spread of covid!" How can anyone watch that without noticing and laughing violently right in Brett Baier's face? HOW?

Well, hell, I guess the judge wouldn't notice. The judge who signed off on "whatever might make sense in New York City could be decidedly counterproductive and harmful in rural communities." Because it begs a question that a more worthy judge is going to ask: "Okay, great, show this court the harm. Show us that the vaccine that is safe and effective if you work in a city -- harms you if you work on a farm. Show us, or I'm parking your ass in jail for contempt."

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Epidemiology (ooh science word!) OBVIOUSLY works different in rural communities than in cities, donchaknow. Something something patriotic Red Americans versus something weak Blue city dwellers, I guess.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I believe that, we in the Dakotas like that Picante Sauce from New York City just fine

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I think you gotta ask, if the media blamed Trump for Covid deaths during 2020, why isn't Biden being blamed for having MORE deaths during 2021? There were no vaccines in 2020. We started 2021 with many of the most vulnerable having unfortunately died in the early stages of the pandemic, and with many other people having some degree of natural immunity from having recovered.

In 2021, there were many people vaccinated. Not everybody, mind you. But many. And yet, Biden still killed more people. But he gets away with blaming YOU, because you aren't vaccinated. What a joke, and Biden should be impeached, and sent to a rest home.

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Dec 2, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I am vaccinated, so don't blame your anti-science nonsense on me. Also 40% of the population wasn't actively trying to spite Trump, like you and idiots like you are with Biden. But Republicans gotta Republican, I guess.

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What anti science nonsense? It is a fact that there have been more deaths recorded in 2021. I am not trying to actively spite Biden, but he is very derisive toward the US people, and he is demented. I am not a republican. I think that the big two are one big problem, I don't have your narrow black and white world view, I guess.

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author

"I am not trying to actively spite Biden, but he is very derisive toward the US people, and he is demented." Hey, thanks for the good-faith argument!

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You are welcome. It is not nice to spite Biden because of his limitations. But we do need to acknowledge his derisive comments, for example, "I have the FreeDahm ta kill ya with my COVID." in his big imitating a redneck voice. He's also clearly a racist, as in the Corn Pop story when he said, "that's how I learned about Roaches" and he said that "poor kids can be as smart as White kids."

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Dec 2, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I don't have your narrow black and white world view, I guess.

Yeah, you worldview comes off more white's only

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Yes, of course, you have nothing to say so you bring up some vague racism allegation that has no basis in anything in the discussion.

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author

"In 2021, there were many people vaccinated. Not everybody, mind you. But many. And yet, Biden still killed more people." The style and reasoning are familiar. Judge Doughty, is that you?

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"reasoning"

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I’m surprised our Attorney General has time to file wingnutty lawsuits when he’s under threat of being impeached for killing a pedestrian while playing with his phone instead of driving. Then again, it’s not like he knows what he’s doing or spends any time on it anyway.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

"Look, we gotta get this virus thing moving again, killing people one-by-one with my car is too time-consuming, not to mention all the tiresome insurance paperwork."

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Yeah. Even cars + guns falls way shorta the Big PandE.

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

I thought he was suspended from AGing?

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Dec 1, 2021Liked by Roy Edroso

Possibly, but I honestly don’t remember. And truthfully the end result is the same. Every lawyer I know has nothing but contempt for his abilities as an attorney. (No bar to office though!)

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I'm rapidly AGing.

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