The Nuking of the American Nuclear Family

I should also be blogging Michelle Malkin more often, but, as noted, my blogging's been light of late, due to big family and work responsibilities. 

That said, I should have more "hotties" posted over the weekend.

Anyway, at the Unz Review:

“Gay poly throuple makes history, lists 3 dads on a birth certificate.”

That’s an actual headline from The New York Post, which last week featured an unsettling trio of men who recruited two female friends to help them conceive and deliver a baby girl named Piper.

Piper is now 3 years old and has a 1-year-old brother named Parker. According to the “gay poly throuple,” Piper told her preschool classmates how proud she was of her plentiful progenitors by bragging: “You have two parents. I have three parents.”

Actually, the “throuple” is really a quintet. If you count Piper’s egg donor and birth surrogate, we’ve now traveled from “Heather Has Two Mommies” (the infamous children’s book normalizing same-sex adoptions published in 1989) to “Piper Has Five Parents.” And in 2021, if you have any discomfort or reservations at all about the nuking of the nuclear family by throuples or quadrouples or dozenouples, then woke society tells us there’s something wrong with us, not them.

Dr. Ian Jenkins, one of Piper’s polyamorous pops, wrote in a newly released book about their “adventures in modern parenting” that the arrangement is “just not a big deal.” Nothing to see here, move along. Two, three, whatever. “Some people seem to think it’s about a ton of sex or something,” Jenkins complained, “or we’re unstable and must do crazy things. (But) it’s really remarkably ordinary and domestic in our house and definitely not ‘Tiger King’ (the creepy Netflix hit series about convicted murder-for-hire zookeeper Joe Exotic, who headed up a three-way “marriage to two men).

Weirdly, one of Piper’s other dads, Jeremy, is also a zookeeper like Joe Exotic whom the other two met through an online dating service. All very “remarkably ordinary and domestic.” Ho-hum.

Neighborhoods, cities and nations are safer, healthier and more prosperous where nuclear families are the norm. But for the sake of social justice and modern progressivism, we are all just supposed to shake our heads politely and keep our alarm about the sexual slippery slope to ourselves. As University of Virginia sociologist W. Bradford Wilcox summarized in a 2020 article reviewing the benefits of two-parent married households for The Atlantic magazine, “sadly, adults who are unrelated to children are much more likely to abuse or neglect them than their own parents are.”

Never mind all the scientific studies showing an elevated risk of child sexual abuse in households where children live with unrelated adults. Never mind the CDC data showing that introducing men unrelated to the children in a family elevates the risk of physical, sexual and emotional abuse of those children by about nine times higher than the rate experienced by children raised in normal, stable nuclear family of married biological parents and their children...

Still more.

 

Friday Afternoon Women

Well, this young little tasty-tart looks a bit like Olivia Jade Giannulli, although one hopes she's nowhere near as much a narcissistic numbskull.

Via Rad Chicks, and more totties here and here.

Rachel Maddow Breaks Silence on Despicable New York Governor Andrew Cuomo

Following-up, "Governor Andrew Cuomo Says He Won't Bow to 'Cancel Culture'."

Well, while New York Dems nearly across the board have abandoned to serial sexual harasser (and groper) Andrew Cuomo, no fear! MSNBC hasn't uploaded Rachel Maddow's rant against Cuomo from last night, and!, both Google and Twitter have buried any search results even pointing you anywhere near Maddow's segments; so no doubt, Creepy Cuomo's still got a little mojo with Big Tech's totalitarians.

I did find this, the first result, at Duck Duck Go, which is actually pretty amazing.

At Fox News "Rachel Maddow breaks silence on Cuomo, warns MSNBC viewers his scandals are 'developing by the second'":

The liberal star referred to the governor's growing political woes as 'quite dramatic'.

MSNBC star Rachel Maddow addressed the growing scandals plaguing Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for the first time since his political woes began six weeks ago.

While her primetime colleagues Chris Hayes and Lawrence O'Donnell similarly waited weeks before finally acknowledging the controversies surrounding the embattled governor, Maddow shocked her viewers Thursday night with an "impeachment inquiry" graphic that loomed over an image of Cuomo.

After taking an audibly deep breath, Maddow began detailing the "dramatic turn" that took place amid the "rising scandals," laying out the sexual misconduct allegations that have surfaced in recent weeks and how an impeachment investigation is being launched by Democratic lawmakers that is set to look into the alleged coverup of nursing home deaths by the governor's administration.

"Now, impeachment at the state level works basically the same way that it does at the federal level," Maddow explained to viewers. "If the Assembly were ultimately to vote to impeach Governor Cuomo, the next step is he would then be tried in the state Senate. Well, as of tonight, roughly two-thirds of the senators in the New York state Senate have already called on Governor Cuomo to step down, including the Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins."

Unlike her CNN rivals, Maddow did mention Cuomo's sixth accuser, a former aide who according to the Albany Times-Union newspaper said the governor groped her late last year at the Executive Mansion. Cuomo denies her claims but called them "gut-wrenching."

MSNBC's most-watched host concluded the segment by offering a warning to her viewers that Cuomo's troubles were far from over.

"This story is developing by the second. Some of these latest developments, quite dramatic. Watch this space," Maddow said.

Prior to "The Rachel Maddow Show," MSNBC offered minimal coverage of the groping allegation on Thursday, giving it only brief coverage in the network's 5 a.m. and 4 p.m. timeslots...

Naturally (*Sigh.*)

 

Governor Andrew Cuomo Says He Won't Bow to 'Cancel Culture'

What a f*cking arrogant, pissant, goober creep. Gawd, this man is indeed the worst governor I can remember in my lifetime, and that's saying a lot, given California's stream of dumb leftist governors over decades, including "Arnold."

"Cancel culture" for you, but not for me, the asshole. 

At NYT, "Cuomo Says He Won’t Bow to ‘Cancel Culture’ and Rejects Calls to Resign":

Nearly all of the Democrats in New York’s congressional delegation, including Representatives Jerrold Nadler and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, say that Gov. Andrew Cuomo has lost the ability to govern.

A raft of powerful Democratic members of New York’s congressional delegation, including Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jerrold Nadler, called on Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to resign on Friday, saying Mr. Cuomo had lost the capacity to govern amid a series of multiplying scandals.

“Governor Cuomo has lost the confidence of the people of New York,” said Mr. Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the highest-ranking members of Congress. “Governor Cuomo must resign.”

Mr. Cuomo immediately rejected the calls for him to step down, telling reporters at a quickly convened news conference that he would not resign or bow to “cancel culture.” He also denied ever abusing and harassing anyone.

“I did not do what has been alleged, period,” Mr. Cuomo said.

The calls for his resignation, which came in rapid succession and appeared to be a coordinated message, were the sharpest rebuke yet of Mr. Cuomo from the upper echelons of the Democratic Party.

A least 13 House Democrats from New York said Friday that Mr. Cuomo should leave office following a string of sexual harassment allegations and controversy over his administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic. Another House Democrat, Kathleen Rice of Long Island, had previously called on Mr. Cuomo to resign.

In remarks to reporters, Mr. Cuomo reiterated that he respected the right of women to speak out, but suggested that some of the accusations may have been ill-motivated and had to be thoroughly investigated.

He said that politicians who had called for his resignation without knowing the facts were “reckless and dangerous.”

“The people of New York should not have confidence in a politician who takes a position without knowing any facts and substance,” he said, adding that “politicians take positions for all sorts of reasons, including political expediency.” He added that “part of this is that I’m not part of the political club.”

“And you know what?” he said. “I’m proud of it.”

President Biden and Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York have not called on Mr. Cuomo to step down, instead reiterating their support of an independent investigation into the sexual harassment claims overseen by the state attorney general, Letitia James. That investigation, conducted by two outside lawyers deputized by Ms. James, began this week...

More at that top link.

 

Piers Morgan Should Be an Inspiration for Us All (VIDEO)

I wish I had the entire show from last night's Tucker Carlson. Half the time I can't stop laughing, especially during his takedown of NYT's fake-journalist and online teen stalker, Taylor Lorenz, to say nothing of the footage of CNN's Brian Stelter broadcasting a segment in his underwear. Just great stuff. 

In any case, Piers Morgan walked off the set at his morning show, "Good Morning Britain," and he demonstrated genuine courage and principles for standing up for his opinions, and refusing to be bullied.

Very good segment:

The Miseducation of America's Elites

Dear readers, my apologies for the light blogging. I'm hitting "crunch time" this week in my "online remote" classes, and I just started a "late-start" class this week (which is a 12-week class, rather than the normal 16-week class, which is a "regular" course in a "normal" semester).

Also, family duties take up a lot of time, especially with my 19-year-old son, who is "on the spectrum," that is, he has "autism spectrum disorder," and while he's "high-functioning," he takes a lot of time to manage, and even as this post goes live, I've still got to help him "settle down" and get to sleep, or he'll be one cranky mofo in the morning, who is hella hard to wake up, lol.

Anyway, just read this fabulous piece by the wonderful Bari Weiss, at City Journal, "Affluent parents, terrified of running afoul of the new orthodoxy in their children’s private schools, organize in secret."

If you're like me, you'll actually get a good giggle out of it, although it's "comic relief," for the actual fear that many folks have, parents and students, of speaking out against "woke" culture, is in fact depressing. That said, Ms. Weiss is now a leader in the counterrevolution that's been taking place, pushing back, and hard, against leftist ideological totalitarians.

So, again, sorry for missing yesterday's blogging, and again, thank you for reading the blog, and also thanks very much if you've purchased books and things through my Amazon links.

Check back tomorrow, and I promise to try to get a bit more "hot" content posted.

Liz Posner 'Was a Well-Meaning WHITE Teacher,' Except She Wasn't a 'Teacher' at All

I should be reading and posting Ann Althouse more often, because she's still one of the very best writers still "blogging" today. 

"Exhibit A" is her post from the other day, "'Black children suffer disproportionately from 'zero tolerance' disciplinary policies under which they are suspended and expelled....'"

You gotta read the whole thing, but it turns out this white "teacher" who authored an op-ed at the Washington Post, entitled, "I was a well-meaning White teacher. But my harsh discipline harmed Black kids," in fact wasn't a teacher at all. As Althouse writes:

The most up-voted comment says: "She was not a teacher. A 'Teach for America'-er. Didn't train to be a teacher. Didn't plan to be a teacher. Planned always to be a writer. Decided to swoop in and save the poor underprivileged children. For two whole years. And, uh, write about it. Not using them at all...."

Posner's own webpage supports that factual assertion: "Liz is a lifelong writer, editor and advocate for social justice. She writes frequently about feminism, education, and justice issues for various publications. While working as a high school Spanish instructor with Teach for America in Memphis, Tennessee, she wrote a novel about low-income students and teachers. As a a writer and editor, she is dedicated to amplifying the voices of marginalized people everywhere.... Liz has known she was destined for a writing career since the 5th grade...."

More at that top link. 

This movement towards "antiracist" ideology (and this bogus idea of "white fragility," which holds that white's feel "discomfort" in discussing race because they're "fragile," and they're actually really racist if race isn't the most important topic of their day) is killing this country. 

I can only shake my darned head, because I have to deal with this idiotic ideological baloney at my college. And while I do try to be fair and "equitable" in my teaching (which in fact translates into lowering standards and ignoring massive disciplinary problems in face-to-face, in-class instruction), as much as I might disagree, sometimes you just have to go with the flow --- especially, if you need to keep you job. 

David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet

David Shambaugh, Where Great Powers Meet: America and China in Southeast Asia.

MacKenzie Scott (Bezos) Marries Seattle Private School Teacher

Talk about "lifestyles of the rich and famous."

I mentioned this piece earlier to my wife and I erroneously suggested that the ex-Mrs. Bezos got "$4 billion" out of her marriage settlement, but I must have been confused the the amount of money she's already given away, which is indeed $4 billion --- and she's only got $53 billion to go!

Must be nice. I mean, I think my wife and I would be fine with a cool billion, lol.

In any case, she's a likable lady, from what little I've seen of her on TV, and she's still relatively young. Now, marrying a "private school teacher" is kinda funny to me, especially since the guy sounds like a kooky "Seattle socialist," ready to "spread" his new wife's wealth. I doubt, in any case, they'll be living in poverty-level accommodations, so, yeah, a life of "privilege" has its perks. *Eye-roll.*

At WSJ, "Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, Ex-Wife of Jeff Bezos, Marries Seattle School Teacher":

MacKenzie Scott, the philanthropist formerly married to Jeff Bezos, has married again following her 2019 divorce from the Amazon.com Inc. founder, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Ms. Scott, one of the world’s wealthiest women, has married Dan Jewett, a science teacher at a Seattle private school, according to the person.

Ms. Scott has devoted much of her time recently to philanthropic efforts benefiting women-led charities, food banks and Black colleges, among other institutions. Since her divorce, Ms. Scott has given away more than $4 billion of her fortune, according to a post she wrote on Medium in December.

In a post dated Saturday on Ms. Scott’s page on the Giving Pledge website, for billionaires who have promised to donate most of their fortune to philanthropic efforts, Mr. Jewett signed on to her commitment.

“It is strange to be writing a letter indicating I plan to give away the majority of my wealth during my lifetime, as I have never sought to gather the kind of wealth required to feel like saying such a thing would have particular meaning,” Mr. Jewett’s post says.

“Dan is such a great guy, and I am happy and excited for the both of them,” said Mr. Bezos in a statement provided by an Amazon spokesman.

Ms. Scott and Mr. Jewett couldn’t immediately be reached for comment on Sunday...

Still more.

 

U.S. Government Scientists Skeptical of One-Shot Regimen for Pfizer, Moderna Covid Vaccines

I'm skeptical, not just of a "one-shot regimen," but any regimen with these freakin' brand new vaccines.

As far as my work goes, the college can't require employees to be vaccinated, but airlines can, and while I'm not planning on flying anytime soon, who knows? Sometimes things come up. My older sister's in Boise, and she just lost her son in January, and perhaps I'd want to fly up there to see her. I don't know? Maybe I'll just want to visit Florida sometime soon, which sounds like a fantastic sojourn to get me out of this hellhole of a state where I currently reside, even if just for a few days.

In any case, at WSJ, "Some members of Congress have urged to allow for just one dose to speed up vaccinations":

WASHINGTON—U.S. government scientists are pushing back against calls for one-dose regimens for two Covid-19 vaccines designed to be administered with two shots, saying there isn’t enough evidence that a single dose provides long-term protection.

“It is essential that these vaccines be used as authorized by FDA in order to prevent Covid-19 and related hospitalizations and death,” Peter Marks, director of the Food and Drug Administration’s center that oversees vaccines, told The Wall Street Journal.

The FDA late last year approved a two-dose regimen for vaccines from Moderna Inc. and from a partnership of Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE. More recently it approved use of a one-dose regimen for a vaccine from Johnson & Johnson.

Some scientists and lawmakers have called for shifting to a one-dose regimen for all the vaccines, citing preliminary studies showing one shot can be effective. They contend shifting to one shot will allow the U.S. to accelerate the pace of vaccinations.

In a March 2 letter to acting Health and Human Services Secretary Norris Cochran, seven physician members of Congress urged the department “to consider issuing a revised emergency use authorization as soon as possible” that might lead to single-dose use of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

“Last week, the U.S. passed a sobering milestone of over 500,000 deaths related to COVID-19,” said the letter, signed by lawmakers including Rep. Andy Harris (R, Md.) and Rep. Gregory F. Murphy, (R., N.C.). “These are staggering statistics, and anything we can do to help prevent further tragedy—to further protect the public health and safety of the American people—should be fully employed.”

In interviews, senior government scientists at the FDA and the National Institutes of Health said such a shift isn’t warranted, saying the evidence used to approve the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines was based on two doses.

These scientists said one dose may offer short-term protection, but the longer-term protection is a question mark.

“You would be flying blind to just use one dose,” said one senior scientist and adviser to President Biden. “If you’re going to do something else other than follow the studies shown to the FDA, show me that this one-shot effect is durable.”

Another senior U.S. government doctor said the durability of the vaccination is especially important when more-resistant strains of Covid-19, including those from the U.K. and South Africa, are appearing in the U.S.

“We think it’s best to get people to as high a level of immunity as possible,” the doctor said.

The doctor added that the pace of vaccinations is accelerating with the recent decision by Merck & Co. to help produce the J&J vaccine.

“We’re going to have a good supply of vaccines very soon,” the doctor said...

Still more.

 

Skateboard Legend Jeff Grosso (VIDEO)

I didn't know him well. 

He was sorta crass, actually. But he was a great skater, and extremely well-loved in the skate community.

The LA. Times has a big write up, "Jeff Grosso: The life and death of skateboarding’s soul":

Jeff Grosso’s first skateboard wasn’t much.

It was a hand-me-down miniature-sized banana board he got from his mom’s boss when he was 8 years old. Even for 1977, it was antiquated, with rickety old clay wheels and worn-out bearings. Grosso barely knew how to stand on the thing, struggling to keep his balance without toppling to the ground.

But for a curious boy whose childhood home was next to a steep hill, there was an instant connection. He would sit on his back or lie flat on his stomach and let gravity take over. Every time he bombed down the street, he fell more in love with the feeling.

“Initially, it was the rush of going down a hill, and the wind in your hair,” Grosso once said. “Poetic nonsense.”

The skateboarding world looks much different now than it did then. Its ever-increasing popularity is pulling the fundamentally subversive sport into the mainstream. Formerly relegated to back alleys and sparse concrete parks, it is now set to debut on the Olympic stage during this summer’s Tokyo Games.

But somewhere at its core, the lust for that poetic nonsense remains.

No one understood it quite like Grosso.

“He was the gatekeeper to why skateboarding was cool,” said skateboarding legend Tony Hawk.

Grosso looked an unlikely figure for such a role. He didn’t have a long pro career, flaming out at the end of the 1980s, hardly spanning the decade. He battled drug addiction and suicidal depression. By his late 20s, it seemed like his life had bottomed out.

But then he rebounded, embodying the resiliency that has defined the entire history of his sport.

Grosso became an ambassador, speaking for skateboarding’s soul through his beloved “Loveletters to Skateboarding” YouTube show. He was a guardian and a helping hand to skateboarding’s newest generation.

In many ways, he was like a north star, his effervescent personality and endearing pertinacity emitting a guiding light through the sport’s most transitional times.

And when he died unexpectedly last March of an accidental drug overdose, it left a void the skateboarding world is still trying to fill.

To best understand skateboarding — its counter-culture roots, its rise to the Olympics, its helter-skelter tale of competing styles, clashing customs and self-sabotaging plot twists — it’s best to understand someone like Jeff Grosso.

Complicated. Flawed. But an authentic source of joy to the end.  

“It’s a total rush. It’s the feeling that when you go out there with your board, it’s a no-hero type of thing. And you either accomplish something or you don’t.” — Jeff Grosso, to the St. Louis Dispatch in 1986.

The rarest sight in skateboarding might be a frown.

Even after a failed trick or nasty wipeout, most skaters are wired to smile, laugh, shake off the dust, and climb back on their boards.

That carefree disposition is what initially captured Grosso’s interest. A stubborn and expressive freckle-faced kid born in Glendale in 1968, he felt like an outcast from a young age. He liked to draw, read “Lord of the Rings” and listen to punk rock. He picked contrarian arguments during conversations simply to spark a debate. And he moved around a lot as a kid: from the hillside house in Eagle Rock, to Las Vegas for a year with his mom, and then to Arcadia for the start of fifth grade.

Though he was naturally athletic, he found the structured pressure of team sports arbitrary and suffocating.

Only when he was on a skateboard did Grosso truly feel free.

“You have this culture of kids that need that,” said his mother, Rae Williams. “They need to go and do this and be creative and come up with new tricks and try different things.”

The newly opened parks soon faltered under liability issues and financial distress, and the young demographic of riders once fueling the boom grew up and moved on. By the time Grosso discovered the sport at the end of the ‘70s, only a small community of self-willed skaters remained.

“Skateboarders were very rare at that time,” said Grosso’s childhood friend Eric Nash, the only other kid at their Camino Grove Elementary School who matched Grosso’s passion for the sport. “Jeff enjoyed that rebel spirit. I think that’s who he was.”

Grosso and Nash spent almost every weekend at one of the few Southland skate parks that were left. Grosso was a perfectionist — at home he was constantly rearranging the furniture in his bedroom — and practiced for hours to perfect a trick. Skate City in Whittier became their home base, though sometimes they snuck away to more secluded spots — a cement ditch behind a church in Glendale, an empty washway nicknamed the “V bowl” in Irwindale.

One of their friends, future pro skater Lance Mountain, had a ramp in the backyard of his Alhambra home where the group would spend hours together honing their technique and embracing a recalcitrant culture few others could comprehend. “We were a bunch of nerds, we were weirdos, we were social outcasts,” Grosso said in a 2015 episode of his “Loveletters” series. “We were the people that nobody wanted to be, doing things that nobody wanted to, and that nobody understood. … We were the freaks. That’s how you rolled. That’s how it was. That’s what drew us to skateboarding.”

“The little wooden toy is a kiss and a curse. It’s everything. It’s the best thing that ever happened to me and the worst thing that ever happened to me, all rolled up into one.” — Jeff Grosso, to Juice Magazine in 2006.

Like any good parent, Williams tried to get her son to think about his future as he went through grade school. Skateboarding, she told him, “is fun and can be a pastime, but you can’t make a career out of it.”

Reliving the memory during an interview, Williams stopped herself and laughed.

“Boy, were we wrong.”

Instead, as Grosso went through his teenage years in the mid-1980s, the sport became cool again...

There's still losts more at the link.

The thing about the "counterculture" aspects of the old skating scene is certainly the punk rock and drugs --- lots of drugs. 

Three of my best friends from back in the day are dead, one from a heroin O.D. years ago, and two of my other best buddies died of drug-related illnesses more recently, especially liver disease. 

That Grosso overdosed himself is extremely sad, but not surprising at all. His death is loss for the sport, but he leaves a great legacy of commitment to the genre.

I'll leave off here with a photo of myself (below), from around 1980, at the Upland Pipeline skatepark, back when the old "pay to play" parks were the big thing. But because I had won so many amateur contests (like the one at the photo, where that "layback" finale scored well with the judges), I had an "all parks" pass to skate for free, at any SoCal skatepark; and in 1984 I turned pro for just one contest, where I was killing it in the banked slalom, but on my first run I lost control going around the third cone, and tumbled badly, breaking my wrist. I didn't quit the contest, though. I got up and completed my second run, and you only get two runs through the course, so that salvaged my self-esteem, and a few folks came up after to praise me for my hard-charging style. 

Nowadays, I still skate once in a while, most recently at the Redlands skatepark a few weeks back, although I mostly putter around the "freestyle" area, like the old man I am. 

  

So Former Governor Gina Raimondo Botched Rhode Island's Coronavirus Response, and the New York Times Shills for Her, Now That She's Joined the Biden Administration

And here I though California and New York were bad. Well, they are, but Ms. Raimondo's a genuine clown, now failing upward to a cabinet post in the Biden administration. Hopefully she'll be better than the far-left hatemonger, Neera Tanden, whose nomination for White House budget chief went down in flames, thank goodness.

Here's the Old Gray Lady, with the brazen polish-job on Ms. Raimondo's deadly record in the Ocean State. 

See, "How Rhode Island Fell to the Coronavirus":

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The numbers began ticking up in September. After a quiet summer, doctors at Rhode Island Hospital began seeing one or two patients with Covid-19 on each shift — and soon three. Then four.

Cases climbed steadily until early December, when Rhode Island earned the dubious distinction of having more cases and deaths per 100,000 people than any other state in the country. The case rate still puts it among the top five states.

Where did this tightly knit state go wrong? Former Gov. Gina Raimondo’s “pauses” on economic activity were short-lived and partial, leaving open indoor dining, shopping malls and bowling alleys. But the shutdowns were no patchier than those in many other states.

Until late summer, she was lauded for reining in the virus. Even now, few residents blame her for the bleak numbers. (Ms. Raimondo was sworn in as the secretary of commerce on Wednesday night.)

Experts point instead to myriad other factors, all of which have played out elsewhere in the country but converged into a bigger crisis here.

The fall chill sent people indoors, where risk from the virus is highest, and the holidays brought people together. Rhode Island is tiny — you can traverse it in 45 minutes. But crammed into that smallish area are a million people, for a population density second only to that of New Jersey. If everyone in the world is connected by six degrees of separation, Rhode Islanders seem to be connected by maybe two.

Central Falls, the epicenter of Rhode Island’s epidemic, has a density of 16,000 people per square mile, almost twice that of Providence. “Just imagine, 16,000 people per square mile — I mean, that’s amazing,” said Dr. Pablo Rodriguez, a member of the government committee that guides Covid vaccine distribution in Rhode Island. “It doesn’t take much for the spark to create an outbreak.”

Apart from its density, Rhode Island has a high percentage of elderly residents in nursing homes, accounting for the bulk of deaths. Packed into the state are multiple urban areas — Central Falls, Pawtucket, Providence — where language barriers, mistrust and jobs have left immigrant families in multigenerational homes particularly vulnerable. The state is also home to multiple colleges that set off chains of infection in the early fall.

For months, the hospitals in Rhode Island were understaffed and overwhelmed. Doctors and nurses were trying to cope with rising caseloads, often without the protective equipment they needed, with constantly shifting guidelines and with their own resilience stretched to the limit.

Dr. Megan Ranney, a researcher and public health advocate, is also an emergency room physician at Rhode Island Hospital who has witnessed the full scope of the state’s crisis firsthand. What she saw unfold over a single shift offers a window into what happened.

Plowing Through It One day in late December, as the crisis reached new heights, Dr. Ranney girded for a long eight-hour shift. The sores behind her ears, where her glasses and the straps of the N95 and surgical masks dug in, still had not healed. But how could she complain, Dr. Ranney said, when her medical residents “eat, sleep, breathe Covid” five days a week?

The patients had it worse, she knew. Anxious and isolated, they became even more discomfited by the masked and unrecognizable doctors and nurses rushing around them. During Dr. Ranney’s shift the prior week, she had seen a broad spectrum: elderly people on a downward spiral, otherwise healthy young Latino men, Cape Verdean immigrants with limited English comprehension.

These demographics are partly what made Rhode Island particularly susceptible, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University in Providence: “Certainly in New England, it is the poorest state — so a lot of poverty, and a lot of multigenerational poverty.”

As in most of the country, the Latino community has borne the brunt of the epidemic. In Rhode Island, Latinos have 6.7 times the risk for hospitalization and 2.5 times the risk of death, compared with white people.

In the days before her shift, Dr. Ranney had been working in a part of the hospital intended to deal with non-Covid cases. But even people with other ailments, like ankle fractures, turned out to be positive for the virus, she found.

“I never know from day to day how bad the surge will be,” she said. “I’ve just got to plow through it.”

It turned out to be an extraordinarily busy day. “The E.R. is full, the hospital is full, the intensive care unit is full,” Dr. Ranney said. “All of our units are moving as quickly as they can, but the patients keep coming in.”

Every time she took off masks during a shift, she ran the risk of contaminating herself. She had had four cups of coffee before this shift, and nothing since.

The average age of the patients that night was about 70. One elderly woman who had trouble breathing could not isolate because she lived with her children and grandchildren. At any rate, she arrived at the hospital 10 days into her illness, too late for isolation to matter.

Rhode Island’s epidemic has been disastrous for immigrant families in multigenerational households. “How do you isolate from someone when you have one bathroom?” Dr. Ranney said...

Well, I like Dr. Ranney, who appears on CNN once in a while, and who doesn't seem to have any particular partisan agenda other than promoting the best medicine to combat the pandemic.

I can't say that for former Governor Raimondo, who obviously bailed out on her "high-density" graveyard of a state. Democrats. They're despicable people.

 

'I do not like you, Mr. Joe'

Me neither.

From Marjorie Taylor Greene, on Twitter.

Saturday Women

What a lovely double-barrel set she's got there, heh.

More here and here.

Shop Best Sellers

Shop Amazon, Our most popular products based on sales. Updated hourly.

BONUS: Mark Krikorian, The New Case Against Immigration: Both Legal and Illegal.

Can Freakin' Governor Andrew Coumo Resign Already? Sheesh (VIDEO)

I've been going pretty hard on my own state's moronic governor, but even the idiot Newsom's not near as bad as the predator in Albany, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

It's gotten so bad for the Emmy winning "author" that mainstream news outlets simply can't ignore the story, and that's keeping in mind that the story itself wouldn't have broken, had not leaked video surfaced, featuring top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa. And the nursing home debacle? This story just keeps getting worse, and there's big headlines this morning, at NYT, "Cuomo Aides Rewrote Nursing Home Report to Hide Higher Death Toll," and WSJ, "Cuomo Advisers Altered Report on Covid-19 Nursing-Home Deaths."

Even far-left CNN's been reporting (and not Chris Cuomo, who's totally complicit at this point), so that tells you something: 

And from this morning Los Angeles Times (which also can't avoid the story, on both of these dolts), here, "News Analysis: Cuomo and Newsom, once pillars of the Democratic Party, now look for paths to survival":

WASHINGTON — It wasn’t supposed to be like this for Democrats, who expected to honeymoon into spring as Republicans sifted through the political wreckage Donald Trump left behind. But the bad behavior and grave unforced errors of two of the party’s biggest outside-the-Beltway stars are spoiling that reprieve, distracting from the Democrats’ work in Washington and forcing them to divert their attention to triage in parts of the country where they usually draw strength.

The missteps and aloofness that now have California Gov. Gavin Newsom facing the threat of recall from office have been overshadowed by the sexual harassment scandal that has rapidly engulfed his counterpart in New York, Andrew Cuomo. The two men took very different paths in their descent from favorites of liberal voters to the targets of scathing parody on “Saturday Night Live,” but both share problems so big they are stealing oxygen from a party that doesn’t have much to spare.

“I feel awful about it,” Cuomo said Wednesday of his behavior that led two women decades his junior who worked for him and a third he met at a wedding to accuse him of sexual harassment. “And frankly, I am embarrassed by it.”

He pledged at a news conference to cooperate with an investigation by the state attorney general, while still maintaining that he did not intentionally harass or inappropriately touch anyone. “I’m not going to resign,” Cuomo said, adding later: “I never knew at the time I was making anyone uncomfortable.”

Cuomo is vowing to serve out the rest of his term at the same time Newsom is battling a well-funded effort to eject him before his term ends. Political experts predict that if the recall qualifies for the ballot, by the time the election is held, voters are likely to be more forgiving of Newsom’s missteps: dining maskless at the Michelin-starred French Laundry while ordering the state locked down, bobbling school reopenings, botching the vaccine rollout, failing to halt billions of dollars in fraudulent unemployment payments.

Nobody is counting either of them out at the moment, as both Cuomo and Newsom have clawed their way back from the political abyss before — Newsom from personal scandals as San Francisco mayor, Cuomo from ethical lapses as governor that resulted in his allies going to prison. But the realities of the #MeToo era for Cuomo and a pandemic that has brought voters to the brink may have made obsolete the playbooks that worked so well for the men in the past. Calling in political favors, circling wagons inside the party and public displays of contrition are less potent tools than they once were.

Cuomo, in particular, is finding the aggressive tactics that helped him survive multiple scandals over the course of his three terms in office are not all that effective when facing claims of unwanted sexual advances. Putting party officials on notice that their loyalty will be rewarded and dissent punished, as Cuomo has in the past, is not going to fly. The allegations compounded a political crisis Cuomo had already created for himself by hiding data related to COVID-19 deaths at nursing homes.

“His problem right now is really big,” said Robert Shrum, director of the USC Dornsife Center for the Political Future. “He’d be lucky to stay governor, and incredibly lucky to run and get reelected.”

If you keep reading, LAT authors Evan Hapler and Seema Mehta can't resist accusing Republicans of hypocrisy regarding the allegations against Cuomo, comparing them to the totally bogus accusations Christine Blasey Ford leveled against now-Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

But it is what it is, and I'll be cheering here in the once-"Golden State" when that recall makes it to the ballot. And I don't know what the citizens of New York are waiting for, but they need to remove the perverted Cuomo, and fast. 

This State is So F*cked (VIDEO)

First up is the news that idiot Democrat state legislators have introduced legislation to ban separate "boys" and "girls" sections in department stores. Yep. That's how psycho the deranged leadership in Sacramento has become (and these people continue to shock in their utter indifference to the real issues facing Californians).

At the Sacramento Bee, "California would ban boys and girls sections at big retailers under proposed law," and Reason, "California Bill Would Give $1,000 Fines to Retailers With Separate 'Girls' and 'Boys' Toy Sections."

In more sheer idiocy, the governor, along with the California Department of Public Health, has issues new guidelines for the states' residents to "double up" on mask wearing, which is so stupid I'm shaking my head *Eye-roll.* Next thing you know, they'll be mandating residents to wear three masks, which of course defeats the purpose anyway, since folks will suffocate to death. 

At LAT, "California urges double masking to prevent COVID spread as Texas relaxes mask rules."

Our idiot governor slammed Texas for relaxing its requirements, and I'll tell you, I was in Houston last November, and even then Texas had indoor dining, and my wife and I had no problems. I think it's the nice weather here that remains the only thing attractive about this "Left Coast" dumphole of a state. 

More at CBS News 2 Los Angeles:

 

Charlotte Bennett Details Sexual Assault Allegations Against Governor Andrew Cuomo (VIDEO)

I've been ragging a lot on the media of late, but this segment, featuring CBS Evening News anchor Norah O'Donnell, interviewing former Cuomo aide Charlotte Bennett, is riveting. 

And O'Donnell also lays into the governor over the nursing home deaths, which again, for me, is one reason I prefer CBS news to its competitors, which, as noted, I don't even watch (especially the joke "Good Morning America" on ABC).

WATCH:

See What I mean About Tucker?

I made a few points about Tucker Carlson in my post from a few days ago. 

Now I love the guy, and I rarely miss an episode of his show. But c'mon! It took me one second to search Google and up pops his comments from 2003, defending the George W. Bush administration's foreign policy, and in particular the Iraq war. See, "Questioning Bush's motives on Iraq."

What's happened, I think, and not wrongly, from the perspective of good television opinion commentary, is that Tucker's "changed his stripes," so to speak, to keep up with the times. He's transformed himself into a "populist-nationalist," obviously because there's been a big market for it this last four years, and he's good at what he does. 

But when he airs commentary like we can see at this video below, unless you're someone who has a long history of following politics (and cable news), then you'd probably wouldn't notice Tucker's wishy-washy hypocritical bull. Remember that old saying about, "having your cake and eating it too"? Well, that's Tucker.

The thing is, interestingly, I personally like a restrained foreign policy. I mean, while Trump didn't start any "new wars" during his time in office, he himself indeed took dramatic and effective military action to defend vital national interests (like the drone strike killing Major General Qassim Suleimani, who was a very bad man, who was personally in charge of killing 100s of U.S. troops during the Iraq war). So, while I think Biden's actions in Syria a week or so ago look questionable by comparison, it's a joke to argue the President Biden doesn't have "the authority" to launch such a strike. Can you name any president since, I don't know, Gerald Ford, who in fact hesitated to take swift military action, even without congressional approval? I can't. And the reason is that the "War Powers Act" itself is probably unconstitutional, though it's never been struck down by SCOTUS. 

Again, I think Tucker's great, and I won't be tuning him out any time soon. His coverage of Biden's immigration disaster is superlative. And Tucker's consistent championing of the forgotten "working class" of this country --- and his hilarious segments taking down the left's "indoctrination" fascination --- is worth the ticket right there. But I'm not going to be some uncritical "rube" who just nods along with everything the guy says, because, remember, it's not insignificantly for *show.* And obviously, his show pays, as there's no chance Fox News will "cancel" Tucker, and indeed, his programming is being expanded big time, starting in April, with exclusive "Fox Nation" subscription content, coming to your screen in no short order.

So, it's all good. Hopefully my faithful readers can see what I'm saying. (And if you're so inclined, you can read some of the best political science research on such matters, here: "Don't Come Home, America: The Case against Retrenchment.")

With that, carry on dear readers, and thank you for your support. 

Here's Tucker at the video from earlier this week:

Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back

At Amazon, Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World.