This Is What Ray Pickett and the Rest of the NCGOP Will Cut in Half

 

Stupidity!

 

MUMPS (the "Musk-Trump Syndicate" -- that's what Thomas Mills calls the junta currently wrecking the furniture and derailing actual human lives) caused the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to abruptly withdraw financial support for testing in clinical trials (in Africa among other places) of new health-care devices and medicines. MUMPS issued a stop-work order to all organizations around the globe that receive its money. ("The abrupt move followed an executive order by President Trump freezing all foreign aid for at least 90 days. Since then, the Trump administration has taken steps to dismantle the agency entirely.") (NYTimes)

The Times focused some reporting on just a few of the persons impacted negatively by this stupidity. Like the 22-year-old woman in South Africa who was participating in a research study that was testing a new device to prevent pregnancy and H.IV. infection -- a device that was surgically inserted into her vagina which required constant monitoring.

In interviews with Times reporters, scientists — "who are forbidden by the terms of the stop-work order to speak with the news media — described agonizing choices: violate the stop-work orders and continue to care for trial volunteers, or leave them alone to face potential side effects and harm."

Not just stupid, but cruel too, and totally irresponsible with other people's lives and health.

The United States is signatory to the Declaration of Helsinki that lays out ethical principles under which medical research must be conducted, requiring that researchers care for participants throughout a trial, and report the results of their findings to the communities where trials were conducted.

The Times identified more than 30 frozen studies that had volunteers already in the care of researchers, including trials of:

malaria treatment in children under age 5 in Mozambique
treatment for cholera in Bangladesh
a screen-and-treat method for cervical cancer in Malawi
tuberculosis treatment for children and teenagers in Peru and South Africa
nutritional support for children in Ethiopia
early-childhood-development interventions in Cambodia
ways to support pregnant and breastfeeding women to reduce malnutrition in Jordan
an mRNA vaccine technology for H.I.V. in South Africa

It's staggering, the Devil-may-care-but-I-don't inhumanity of Musk and his facilitator, Jethro -- it's unethical, it's immoral, it's dishonorable, it's un-American. It involves and implicates ALL OF US as voting citizens of this Republic.

The Scene Outside Thom Tillis's Greensboro Office on Wednesday

These protests appear to be largely spontaneous. Tillis needs to be confronted by his craven obeisance to King Trump. 

Paul Garber for WFDD

Snotnose Republican Freshman in NC House Intends To Limit Early Voting

 

Snotnose

Last Wednesday, Feb. 5th, Republican state Rep. Wyatt Gable filed a bill in Raleigh to drastically cut the early voting period in North Carolina from three weeks down to a mere six days, with a prohibition against any Sunday voting (because it's favored by Black voters, we assume).

Gable is an Onslow County Republican who just won election to his first term in November as a 22-year-old East Carolina University student. 

Did he not realize the enthusiastic participation by Republican voters in early voting last November? Republicans have caught on to the pleasures that they had eschewed because early voting had been such a consistent practice among Democrats. But Republicans out-voted Democrats in 2024 early voting by over 166,000.

Yet genius Gable wants to inconvenience everyone. Republicans don't seem capable of pausing their assault on voting rights, even when a particular option has greatly favored them. 

NC Republicans Don't Like It When A.G. Jeff Jackson Calls Jethro "Unlawful"

 

On January 21st, the day after Donald Jethro Trump issued an executive order supposedly changing the Constitution to deny citizenship to any person born in these United States, NC Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined 20 other attorneys general to file a lawsuit in DeeCee seeking to block the "flagrantly unlawful attempt to strip hundreds of thousands [of] American-born children of their citizenship based on their parentage."

On Wednesday, Feb. 5, three North Carolina Senate Republicans -- Tim Moffitt, Eddie Settle, and Bobby Hanig -- filed a bill to restrict Jeff Jackson, from suing to block any flagrantly unlawful presidential executive orders and from taking legal action against any bills passed by the General Assembly.

That's how the clown-car does it: Hobble justice itself, remove the independence of our state's chief prosecutor to call a spade a goddamn spade.

Our disgust with the Republican majority in the NC General Assembly grows stronger every day. They are never hesitant in going too far. And some day, when there's a Republican Attorney General in North Carolina serving with a Democratic majority in the lege, if this piece of shit law passes, they'll regret ever putting their thumb on the administration of justice.

People vs. Griffin Rally in Boone: Day/Time/Location

 

Monday, February 17, 4-6 p.m.

Hatchett Coffee, 150 Den Mac Drive, East Boone

Here's the link for registering to attend: https://www.mobilize.us/commoncause/event/753571/

They Want You To Believe That Bullying Worked

On February 5th (yesterday), the U.S. Department of State published this on its Facebook page:

That announcement came after not one but two new Jethro lapdogs, Little Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth, met with Panamanian officials over Low T's threat to take back the Canal and his complaints that Panama charged too much for passage through.

This morning the President of Panama, Jose Raul Mulino, said that was a big fat honking lie (and by implication, Marco and Hegseth are little eager bitches who hit "SEND" too quickly). Speaking to journalists, Mulino expressed his "absolute rejection" of the US State Department's announcement. "Mulino said he had told U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Wednesday that he could neither set the fees to transit the canal nor exempt anyone from them and that he was surprised by the U.S. State Department's statement suggesting otherwise."

And by the way, Fat Boy, the Canal is the property of Panama and is not up for sale, lease, or gifting.

The GOP in the General Assembly Once Again Shrug-Off Hurricane Helene

 

Gov. Stein in Boone recently.
Noah Williford, The Appalachian

Just happening in North Carolina: For the second time in three months the Republican bastards in the General Assembly (the new team of Berger/Hall) have proposed much less -- about half of what Western North Carolina needs for recovery from Hurricane Helene and half of what Governor Stein requested for our devastated region -- Berger/Hall say $500 million should be enough, instead of the requested and badly needed $1 billion.

To recap the first General Assembly diss of our ravaged counties, here's Thomas Mills:

In December, when Roy Cooper was still governor, the legislature went back into session, supposedly to address the needs of hurricane victims. Instead, they used the time to strip power from Democrats who won seats on the Council of State in November. They shuffled money around from existing funds but refused to allocate additional resources to the region.

As Republican Representative Mark Pless told The Assembly at the time, “The disaster portion of it doesn’t do anything …. [I]t was just moving money from one account to another without actually appropriating it for anything.”

Stein's request included grants to businesses wiped away or severely damaged by Helene, but Berger/Hall's bill prohibits grants to businesses. Bastards. I know of at least one thriving landscaping business in western Watauga that was totally wiped out -- greenhouses, equipment, plants, the whole livelihood. FEMA does not give disaster money to businesses. It's up to the state. And those Republican SOBs think they can get away with turning their backs on some 30 majorly Republican counties they consider "theirs."  

At least Gov. Stein engineered a public-private fund of some $30 million to help businesses specifically, but that's a mere drop in the bucket. A small Kubota front-end loader, back-end digger will run you over $80,000.