FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

The Hall of Fame fucks left out the Dolls, phooey! Here's a song I thought for years was a Dolls original, Good either way.

•   I said last week I was scaling back on the freebies from Roy Edroso Breaks It Down, aka the only Substack that's not just some mope crying cancelculture (plus it has laffs!). But I can't help it, mine is a generous nature -- this week I offer two out of this week's five (5) issues, which is what I give paying customers every week (How does he do it! How long can he last!). The first shows a conference between Bari Weiss and the Kentucky Derby guy who said he was cancelcultured (i.e. caught doping his horse); the second is today's installment, about how, while the Never Trumpers have receded, the Just-The-Tip Trumpers have emerged as the Republican Party's dominant faction, led by Crazy Jesus Lady Peggy Noonan. 

•   Speaking of logrolling, I seldom do the hat-tips that were once the bread and butter of blogdom because no one gives a shit about blogs anymore (even Tubby can't get the rubes stiff with his). But I must mention that Ellis Weiner, an old National Lampoon hand, has a food blog called Learning from Linguine that anyone will appreciate who has gazed in mute horror at the increasingly atrocioius atrocities with which foodies try to wring clicks 'n' cachet out of the ancient art of cookery. This, for example, is from Weiner's response to Eleven Madison Park going meatless:

1. Learning from Linguine will, from today on, not publish any recipes using beef unless they’re really good. That will eliminate some of the beef-based recipes we have already developed and have otherwise intended to publish, which aren’t so great.

2. As for other forms of meat, we will only publish recipes which employ meats from animals that only eat plants. We will immediately shut down our research program investigating the feasibility of employing plants that eat meat, such as the Venus Fly-Trap (Dionaea muscipula)...

Mighty good copy for the pennies it costs. (Actually it's free -- even better!) 

•   Last week I documented the new rightwing craze of denouncing people who wear masks as The Real Virus-Spreaders. Now that the CDC says the vaccinated can go commando, these people are getting completely out of hand, as we can see from the cocaine-encrusted Don Junior's ravings:

Ben Shapiro does something similar ("we have known this for months"), albeit with less gums-rubbing and sniffling. Nearly as bad are the allegedly respectable rightwing outlets like TownHall:

For weeks, everyone knew you didn’t need to wear a mask after you were vaccinated. You also didn’t spread the virus when you got the shot as well; that was atrocious science fiction that Dr. Anthony Fauci and his crew peddled...

Well, it turns [out] Rand [Paul] and the rest of us who knew that mask-wearing after vaccination was idiocy were right. The experts don’t know anything. Well, first, they’re not really experts. They’re DC bureaucrats who are giving their so-called advice while also hoping to get more funding for next year’s budget so ulterior motives abound...

This is sort of a post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy, only dumber: Because scientists have now decided it's safe for the vaccinated to do without masks, rightwingers think it proves masks were never necessary and WHAT ELSE WERE THEY LYING TO US ABOUT!

Myself, I have a few days of mask-wearing left because my wife's vaccination is not yet fully cooked and I care what happens to people who are not me -- which is not a universal trait in this country, alas, so even after this, I'll be selective about masklessness -- like, definitely masking on buses and trains when that becomes optional, because I know the psychos who spent a year rampaging through stores without masks screaming about their rights will now just sit quietly and contentedly diffusing COVID. 

Meantime let us savor what may be the apotheosis of this nonsense -- Matt Taibbi claiming Biden only kept wearing a mask (until yesterday, that is) because he's a tyrant:

I’d be the last person to ever suggest an unvaccinated person go without a mask — I wore one everywhere since this thing started — but the symbolism of, say, a vaccinated Joe Biden still wearing a mask outdoors in defiance of CDC guidelines, or Kamala Harris releasing pictures of herself wearing a mask for a Zoom call, is increasingly obvious. For a politician, the mask is a symbol of the authority he or she has borrowed from science, and removing one is a symbol that the fear justifying emergency power has subsided. It’s hardly surprising to see a reluctance to take masks off, even when scientists say it’s fine to do so.

That Taibbi stuck this on yet another cancelculture blubberfest is just the shit icing on the crapcake. 

UPDATE on the above -- This is rich: At HotAir, Ed Morrissey is mad at Nancy Pelosi because... she wants all House members to keep wearing masks because the Republican members refuse to get vaccinated.

And … so? As someone who was masking when the CDC advised against it, I’m in better position than most to say that the risk should be transferred to those who refuse to vaccinate. I might still choose to mask up in certain situations, in large part to protect my immune-suppressed wife, but that will be my choice. There is no need to mandate me as a vaccinated person to mask up on the basis that people choose not to vaccinate, a standard that would in essence become a permanent mask mandate and put the burden of irresponsibility on responsible citizens.

Where precisely is the risk here anyway? It’s on those who choose not to get vaccinated. As the CDC finally admitted yesterday and the science has shown for months...

(Funny, I didn't know Morrissey was an epidemiologist as well as a propagandist.)

...the vaccinated have such a surpassingly microscopic risk of symptomatic infection and contagious status that no further protection is necessary. If the unvaccinated feel at risk over unmasked vaccinated people, they can either (a) mask up themselves, or (b) get vaccinated, as the vaccines are now ubiquitously available, especially for members of Congress.

If the Republicans and staffers who choose not to get vaccinated end up with an acute case of COVID-19, that’s on them.

So, even though Morrissey is still masking himself because he has an immunocompromised loved one, he's less angry at the GOP assholes who ain't gonna take no goldurned vaccine than he is at the Democrats who will mask in session to mitigate the risk their maskless colleagues willfully present. 

As I've pointed out, these assholes were bitching a few weeks ago that by staying masked Democrats were discouraging vaccination.  Now we have a perfect closed study of conservatives who won't mask no matter what, and Morrissey is bitching that Democrats are staying masked because...they're being too accommodating toward their more vulnerable colleagues, I guess, which is bad because it's mollycoddling and Republicans are ruff-tuff creampuffs. 

I expect next Morrissey will start yelling at grocery stores that continue to require masks-- c'mon, the responsible customers are safe, and to hell with the rest of them! And don't talk to me about "variants," I'm a conservative and I know the science was settled months ago in my favor.