☕️ Coffee & Covid ☙ Friday, October 8, 2021 ☙ The World Strikes Back 🦠

The Florida Board of Education makes a move against rebellious Florida counties; an update from Sweden since it’s lifted all Covid restrictions; comparing Sweden to the U.S.; Tesla makes a move ...

Today’s roundup includes lot of great news about all kinds of people and things striking back against Covid overreach. The Florida Board of Education makes a move against rebellious Florida counties; an update from Sweden since it’s lifted all Covid restrictions; comparing Sweden to the U.S.; Tesla makes a move; Amazon makes a move; failed AG Garland might have a conflict; Rashida Tlaib joins the extravagently-coiffed Nancy Pelosi in the hypocrite’s hall of fame; an uninjected sports star catches Covid from a fully-injected trainer; and LA’s sheriff pushes back against the county’s injection ultimatum.

🗞*COVID NEWS AND COMMENTARY* 🗞

🔥 The Florida State Board of Education (BOE) strikes back! The BOE met yesterday to figure out what to do about several school districts in Florida that have been breaking state law and making up their own Covid rules. Alachua, Brevard, Broward, Duval, Hillsborough, Indian River, Leon, Miami-Dade, Orange, Palm Beach, and Sarasota counties have been proudly “defying” the state’s health regulations related to masking and quarantines for school children.

Just before the meeting, Hillsborough County, Indian River County, and Sarasota County backed down and all announced they would begin complying. So the BOE kindly took those counties right off the agenda. Resolved! See how easy that was?

But the other counties were recalcitrant. You see, it’s OKAY for school boards to defy laws that they disagree with. But it’s NOT OKAY for citizens to defy mask mandates that they disagree with. You see the difference? It makes TOTAL sense. So don’t even TRY to argue with them. Science! Shut up!

The BOE allowed for some spirited public comment, one minute per caller. That’s not a lot. But the majority of callers — mostly domestic terrorists, I mean moms — spoke passionately about how the rebelling districts were unlawful, harmful, and ignorant. There were a handful — two or three — who supported the rebels, saying “we LOVE that our district is fighting against the empire!” They think they’re Ewoks or something. But it ultimately wasn’t helpful, since the BOE’s chair noted that their comments confirmed that the districts were out of compliance.

One especially bizarre caller said her special-needs child has to type on his computer with his nose. She said that masking all the other kids would help him type better or something. How does he type with a double-mask on? She didn’t explain that part.

Each of the superintendents of the insurgent districts had their chance to speak too, five minutes each. Well. They WERE the subjects of the BOE’s inquiry, after all. To a woman, they all claimed to be “in compliance” because they had all set up their own miniature departments of health by cherry-picking local scientific and medical experts that would say whatever they wanted them to say.

Oddly, the superintendents just couldn’t find any experts ANYWHERE that disagreed with them. So, they must be right. Right?

And — shocker — since the cherry-picked medical and scientific experts on all the tiny independent departments of health all agreed 100% with their superintendents, they also disagreed with the OFFICIAL Florida Department of Health. I hope you’re paying attention. Because this is the recipe, apparently, for defying the law. You just set up your own little separate government and staff it with puppets and then pass resolutions. Or something. Just like how they do it in Venezuela.

Or, on the other hand, maybe it doesn’t work. The BOE ultimately decided to sanction the rebellious counties, and docked their board salaries. Two counties — Alachua and Broward — are helping the federal government out with its political campaign against Governor DeSantis. Biden recently paid those counties in federal grant money to offset their lost salary money, to teach the Governor a lesson. So yesterday, the BOE sanctioned those two counties in the exact amount of all the federal money they’ve received, plus any future money they might get from Joe Biden. So.

It was political dynamite. The districts aren’t hurt — they’re even-steven, except for the school board salaries. The state money they lost was offset by the gained Biden money. See what happened there? The BOE just got Biden to fund significant parts of the Alachua and Broward budgets, saving the state hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thanks Joe Biden! They should use the money to buy more monoclonal antibody treatments. Wouldn’t that be great?

Of the eight superintendents who spoke, six were obviously reading prepared statements. It was embarrassing. It sounded like they were reading at about a fifth-grade level. They stumbled over words, emphasized the wrong parts of sentences, and one or two even lost their place a couple times. Yikes. These folks all have annual salaries between $200K and $500K. More evidence of the failure of the public-school education system, I guess. At least you can still get paid well, if you have the right political connections.

Alachua’s superintendent was particularly embarrassing. She used part of her five minutes to go off on an unrelated tirade about how the BOE hasn’t applied for some kind of federal Covid grant, until she was politely interrupted by one of the BOE members who was like, um, we HAVE applied for that grant. Whoopsies! Never mind!

The BOE’s chair announced the results of Florida’s most recent investigation of Covid in schools. They found that, in districts with no mandate, there’d been a decrease in cases of -65% during the study period, including a decrease in cases of -79% for kids aged 5-11. Whereas in counties with a strict mandate, the decrease was -67% overall; but only -76.5% for ages 5-11. In other words, the strict-mandate counties showed no statistical benefit from their policies. So, the tradeoff of hurting the kids who don’t do well in masks is utterly unjustified.

Somebody needs to remind me how all this fighting with the State government helps the school systems in those districts.

🔥 Sweden strikes back! It’s been one week since Sweden removed all Covid restrictions. Sweden’s new cases have fallen by 16%. In one week. Just saying.

🔥 By comparison, here in the U.S., over 200 million people have now been injected, and much of the country is still subject to lockdowns and mask mandates. Plus a lot of crazy people are still wearing masks outside. Over 68% of American adults are fully vaccinated, and 78% have had at least one dose. But Covid cases and deaths are now more than double what they were this same time last year — without injections. So. Thanks experts!

🔥 Tesla strikes back! The innovative space, energy, and auto company — whose stock is BLOWING UP right now — just finished its annual shareholder meeting in Austin, Texas. One of its official announcements was that Elon Musk has decided to move Tesla’s headquarters from Palo Alto, California to Austin, Texas.

You might remember that California shut Tesla down last year for being “non-essential.” When Musk complained, California Assemblywoman Lorena S. Gonzalez from San Diego , who describes herself on Twitter as a “Mama, Labor Leader turned CA Assemblywoman [and] Progressive Latina Democrat”, tweeted, “F*ck Elon Musk.” Musk’s responded, tweeting “Message received.”

At this week’s shareholder’s meeting, Musk didn’t mention the dispute with California. Instead, he said “It’s tough for people to afford houses [there] and people have to come in from far away. There’s a limit to how big you can scale it in the Bay Area. In Austin our factory is like five minutes from the airport, 15 minutes from Downtown.”

There you go. Convenience.

Musk also said Tesla plans to build “an ecological paradise” at the Austin location near the Colorado River. Sounds nice. I wish him well, not least because I have some Tesla stock and have driven a Model-S for four years now. Great car, by the way.

Tesla was the last carmaker located in California. Buh bye. Great job, progressive Latina Assemblywoman Gonzalez.

🔥 Amazon strikes back! Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos announced that the retail giant will be moving its corporate headquarters out of Seattle, whose downtown now looks exactly like the set from “The Walking Dead.” Seattle recently passed some kind of extra tax on Amazon, because diversity and inclusion, or something, over Amazon’s objections. Oh well. Buh bye, Seattle.

🔥 Soccer moms strike back! Oh dear. This is awkward. Failed Supreme Court nominee and dictatorial Attorney General Merrick Garland was up on Capitol Hill yesterday to defend his bizarre memo instructing the FBI to investigate soccer moms for domestic terrorism over their opposition to “Critical Race Theory” indoctrination materials.

Addressing skeptical republicans, Garland admitted that the Constitution protects ‘spirited debate.’ But then he incorrectly claimed that free-speech principles yield not only to ‘threats of violence’ but also to ‘efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.’ He just made that up. Or he legit doesn’t know his constitutional law. Which is, maybe, why he’s not a Supreme Court justice right now.

So anyway, some intrepid soccer moms did a little digging. Guess what they found? Attorney General Merrick Garland’s daughter is Rebecca Garland. Three years ago, Rebecca married Xan Tanner, who is now Garland’s son-in-law. Garland’s son-in-law owns a company called “Panorama Education.” Guess what Panorama sells? You’ll never guess. CRITICAL RACE THEORY MATERIALS FOR SCHOOLS. Ah, it all makes sense now.

So the Attorney General of the United States just issued an unprecedented draconian threat of criminal prosecution against moms who try to stop school districts from buying critical race theory materials, which is just what his daughter and son-in-law sell for a living. A conflict? What conflict? Science!

H.L. Mencken famously said, “When someone says it’s not about the money, it’s about the money.”

🔥 Open mikes strike back! On Wednesday, the shrilly pro-mask Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) was caught on camera admitting that she only wears a mask outside for political effect. At an event in Detroit, an unmasked supporter can be seen speaking to the heavily-masked Talib, who then backs away from him, apparently in terror. Obviously embarrassed, the man whips a mask out of his pocket and starts to put it on, apologizing to Talib.

Then, the video shows Talib pull her mask halfway down, and race back to the guy to reassure him. “Oh, no, oh, not you!” Tlaib assured him. She then got closer to him and with her mask pulled down, can be heard saying, “No, no, no — I’m just wearing it because I’ve got a Republican tracker here.”

So, she’s not crazy. She’s just a hypocritical poser.

💉 Contact tracers strike back! In sports news, the Bills’ Cole Beasley, who is uninfected and tested negative for Covid, was forced to quarantine anyway because he was contact traced to a fully-injected trainer who then got a breakthrough infection. Because science.

💉 Sheriffs strike back! One day after Los Angeles’s jabbering Mayor Eric Garcetti ordered what he calls the “strictest vaccine passport requirement the country,” LA Sheriff Alex Villanueva said that he will NOT enforce ANY vaccine mandates, saying his employees are willing to get fired over it. “I don’t want to be in a position to lose 5, 10% of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate,” he explained. So.

Enjoy all this great news, have a fantastic Friday, and we’ll grab another hot one tomorrow morning with more snarky Covid commentary.

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