Jim: Roundtable time. Remember our e-mail
address is thethirdestatesundayreview@yahoo.com. Participating in our roundtable are The Third Estate Sunday Review's Dona, Ty, Jess, Ava, and me, Jim; Rebecca of Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude; Betty of Thomas Friedman Is a Great Man; C.I. of The Common Ills and The Third Estate Sunday Review; Kat of Kat's Korner (of The Common Ills); Cedric of Cedric's Big Mix; Mike of Mikey Likes It!; Elaine of Like Maria Said Paz); Ruth of Ruth's Report; Trina of Trina's Kitchen; Wally of The Daily Jot; Marcia of SICKOFITRDLZ; Stan of Oh Boy It Never Ends; Isaiah of The World Today Just Nuts and Ann of Ann's Mega Dub. Betty's kids did the
illustration. You are reading a rush transcript.
Jim: Has anyone noticed anything with COVID?
Trina: I have a problem with the figures. They should be standardized throughout the US but many states have a lower count than what they have at the CDC. The count on Thursday, for example, for Massachusetts was 512,214 at the CDC but 504,564 at the Massachusetts Dept, of Public Health site. I checked other states and Wally's mother helped me with that on Friday and we found that some states differed by 10,000 and some by 100,000 or more. I would assume -- wrongly apparently -- that a state's public health site would be the most up to date and the CDC would lag. I do wonder what the reasons for this are?
Ava: C.I. and I were doing a Zoom event last week with a group of feminist healthcare workers and one got COVID on Christmas Eve. As part of that, she got a nasty rash that covered her entire back. She talked about it and even held up her phone to show a photo. I wasn't aware of that so I'm tossing it out.
Trina: A rash can be a sign of COVID. Rashes develop for some but they are not as common as fever, for example. They are saying that a rash can last two days to 12 or 14 days but everyone I've seen with a COVID rash has had it for close to a month.
Ava: The woman we spoke with on Zoom had hers since December 24th and it was 2/3/21 when we spoke to her.
Trina: I think the rash is one of the least understood effects currently.
Jess: I heard of a friend's grandfather who had bluish lips.
Trina: Unless the person has just consumed blue Kool-Aid, bluish lips mean go to the emergency room immediately. That's regardless of whether it's a COVID symptom or not and, yes, it can be a COVID symptom.
Jim: Unless there are more COVID questions or issues? No? Okay, thank you, Trina. And for readers who do not know, Trina is a registered nurse of many years. She's been in a clinic setting for many years now but due to COVID now grabs a full week at a Boston clinic and also a weekend shift at a hospital. New topic, Ty?
Ty: Reader Warren asks, "How crazy is Maxine Waters?" Waters is a House Representative in the US Congress. She represents thd 43rd district in California.
Betty: Maxine has become a huge disappointment. Her latest nonsense has her insisting Donald Trump needs to be charged with pre-mediated murder -- see Jonathan Turley for analysis.
Is she insane? Is she trying to stoke unrest? At 82, has the mind gone? I have no idea. I know she used to be strong on the Iraq War. Used to be.
Ruth: Ms. Waters has not done anything to stop the ongoing war in over a decade. She is useless on this issue.
Betty: And on most issues of late. I seriously question her mental competency. She used to make demands and statements that some found off but I could understand them -- and often support them. They were truth to power type statements. Now she's just a dottering fool. It's very sad to see. But it's been especially sad to watch her walk away from peace as well.
Isaiah: Depressing and disgusting and she chaired the Out of Iraq caucus in the House. But they were ridiculous the minute Barack got into office and her statements on the floor of Congress, August 9, 2009 were just shameful -- we weren't calling for out of Iraq immediately -- well what was the point of the Caucus?
Cedric: To do nothing, obviously. They formed in 2005 and really did nothing and Maxine admitted that on August 9, 2009. Go away, Maxine. You were a once proud warrior who just became an embarrassing and pathetic politician.
Ann: They're all shameful, pretty much. I love Ava and C.I.'s saying, "I don't fall in love with politicians, I'm not that pathetic."
Isaiah: But so many are that pathetic and they need to pretend that public servants who barely do their jobs are somehow heroes.
Dona: Why do you think that is? I think we need everything in black and white for simplistic narrative. Take, for example, the late John Conyers. I am comfortable saying he harassed women and that was wrong but he was also great in the Congress. People are complex. I think some people have a problem with complexities.
Rebecca: And a problem with basics. So many people don't pay attention to anything at all. Take the nuts who love Al Franken. Useless Al leaving the Senate was not a loss. Losing Conyers, even at his advanced age, was a loss. And damn it, if we had to lose Conyers then we certainly needed to lose Al Franken. I love how Jane Mayer built her reputation on defending one victim of harassment and then shredded her own reputation with her defense of Al Franken. Jane is the text book definition of a whore. What a joke she so quickly became.
Trina: A sad and dirty joke.
Stan: She really did sell out and is fool of the fakery. Jane hates religious people and I always wonder when they're going to get demontized on. I mean some of the same howler monkeys, I'm sure, would insist that there is no proof or this or that. And faith is the opposite of science. I think YOUTUBE, TWITTER and the rest need to stop their censorship efforts.
Ruth: On that, I am so glad that Bonnie Faulkner's GUNS AND BUTTER is back on WBAI.
Kat: Yes, that is great news.
Jim: On news, what stories aren't being covered that you wish were?
Mike: There is an absence of war coverage in all things media big and small. It is a glaring failure.
Wally: Yeah, I wish that when the media lost interest in wars that the wars ended.
Ann: Wouldn't that be something?
Cedric: Yeah and probably the only way the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War are ever going to end.
Rebecca: Both are adults now -- or next month. Afghanistan already is and Iraq hits the 18th year next month. And they never end.
Elaine: And liars pretend that they know something. That YOUTUBE video -- and let's not give that man credit by naming it -- was the most ignorant and uninformed 'analysis.' It was like neo-con lite.
C.I.: Wally, Kat, Ava and I have spent years speaking to college groups about the wars and still do via Zoom and other means. No one has ever been as poorly informed as that man was. But, that said, the left half of the media has done such a poor job on this topic that lies are sinking in. It's like Jane Fonda said regarding Vietnam, paraphrasing, "They keep asking me, why do you keep going back? Because the other side, it keeps going back." War Hawks always have a voice in corporate media.
Jim: Where does Jane make that statement? CNN interview with Larry King?
C.I.: No, in the documentary SIR! NO SIR!
Mike: I love that movie. And that's an important point Fonda made. If we don't continue to speak about Iraq, we lose. The other side will. The other side sold the Iraq War on lies and they carry shame -- but only as long as we know the real deal. And people don't all know the real deal.
Elaine: Plus whores have tried to rehab Bully Boy Bush, Colin Powell and others.
Betty: Support. The faux 'resistance' was hideous and did real damage to the country and to the left.
Marcia: This is the same group of losers who have decided Liz Cheney is a hero.
Jim: Good point. On that one, we'll wind down. This is a rush transcript.