How Scary are the MAGAts?

So scary that it scares sovereign citizen nut-job Ammon Bundy.

Not so long ago, Ammon Bundy was the most famous right-wing militia leader in America. His two armed standoffs with federal agents had made him the face of the Patriot Movement: a loose assemblage of anti-government extremists, Second Amendment maximalists, and more than a few white nationalists. Even some mainstream elements of the Republican Party embraced him as a modern folk hero. But Bundy’s criticism of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown now threatens to make him a pariah within his own community.

In November, Bundy self-published a long essay titled “The Stranger,” in which he labeled the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants a “moral failure.” “To call such people criminals for lacking official permission” to be in the country, he wrote, “is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice.” On a recent livestream following the killing of Renee Good in Minnesota, Bundy told his audience that ICE’s conduct “clearly looks like tyranny.” If the government threatened his family, he said, he would fight back by whatever means necessary.

I did not have that on my bingo card. 

25% Lower All-Cause Mortality

Get your vaccines.

A new study covering 30 million Frenchmen shows that not only is there no increase in mortality from MRNA Covid vaccines, but mortality is significantly lower.

At a glance

• Among 28 million French adults aged 18–59, those who received an mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccine were less likely to die in the subsequent four years than those who remained unvaccinated, corresponding to a 25% lower risk of death from all causes.
• Although vaccinated adults were 74% less likely to die from severe COVID-19, the reduced mortality risk persisted after COVID-19 deaths were excluded from the analysis.
• The study found no increase in the risk of deaths from cancer, heart disease, accidental injury or any other major category: in every case, vaccinated individuals had equal or lower rates of death.

For years, a lingering question has shadowed COVID-19 vaccination campaigns: are mRNA vaccines safe in the long run?

While many studies have established that COVID-19 vaccines prevent severe illness and death in the weeks and months after injection, sceptics have continued to ask whether any hidden harms might surface later on.

Now, one of the largest long-term vaccine safety studies ever undertaken – including data from more than 28 million adults aged 18 to 59 – offers the clearest answer yet.

Get your damn vaccine.  Covid f%$#s you up.  MRNA, adjuvant, it does not matter. 

H/t Dr. Eric Ding

We Have Names

The two CBP agents who shot Alex Pretti in the back were Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez.

Spread their names around:

The two federal immigration agents who fired on Minneapolis protester Alex Pretti are identified in government records as Border Patrol agent Jesus Ochoa and Customs and Border Protection officer Raymundo Gutierrez.

The records viewed by ProPublica list Ochoa, 43, and Gutierrez, 35, as the shooters during the deadly encounter last weekend that left Pretti dead and ignited massive protests and calls for criminal investigations.

Both men were assigned to Operation Metro Surge, an immigration enforcement dragnet launched in December that sent scores of armed and masked agents across the city.

CBP, which employs both men, has so far refused to release their names and has disclosed few other facts about the deadly incident, which came days after a different immigration agent shot and killed another Minneapolis protester, a 37-year-old mother of three named Renee Good.

Pretti’s killing, and the subsequent secrecy surrounding the agents involved, comes as the country confronts the consequences of President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. The sweeps in cities across the country have been marked by scenes of violence, against immigrants and U.S. citizens, by agents allowed to hide their identities with masks — an almost unheard of practice in law enforcement. As a result, the public has been kept from one of the chief ways it has to hold officers involved in such altercations accountable: their identity.

………

Ochoa is a Border Patrol agent who joined CBP in 2018. Gutierrez joined in 2014 and works for CBP’s Office of Field Operations. He is assigned to a special response team, which conducts high-risk operations like those of police SWAT units. Records show both men are from South Texas. 

This information should have been made public by DHS, and ProPublica has done a real public service and some really good journalism.

A Plan So Cunning You Could Put a Tail on It and Call It Weasel

Get in. We're messing up Melania's Amazon search results
byu/mulcahey inesist

The Pitch

The Cover Art

The blurb.

Over on Reddit, someone has made a wonderful suggestion, that we all go to Amazon, and that we all, "Amplify the paranormal erotic thriller novel Melania: Devourer of Men so it ranks higher than her movie," on Amazon.

The eBook is free on kindle, so you can download it, and boost the algorithm, so that when someone searches for, Melania the documentary, they get this book instead.

This act is generally called, "Google Bombing," though in this case, it would be Amazon bombing.

Classic examples of Google bombing, are sucessful efforts to make the search for "Miserable failure," giving the result of George W. Bush, and the word, "Santorum," giving the result, "The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex." 

Surely we can do the same to Melania.